


Reach Across the Vastness

by Person



Category: Avatar: Last Airbender
Genre: Avatar Big Bang, F/M, Post-Canon, Suspense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-29
Updated: 2011-05-06
Packaged: 2017-10-12 07:14:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 28,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/122281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Person/pseuds/Person
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years after the war ends a group of Earth Kingdom radicals, unhappy that the Fire Nation wasn't entirely destroyed at the end of the war, discover that the Fire Lord's own uncle is living in Ba Sing Se and kidnap him. Only Toph is close enough to rescue Iroh, a rescue which becomes a race for their lives across the entire kingdom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was originally made for the Avatar Big Bang. I decided to post the chapters of it over the next week and a half or so, instead of throwing it at everybody in one giant hunk all at once. Hope y'all enjoy!

When she looked back on it, years and years and _years_ after the fact, when enough time had passed that she could finally divorce the memories from the fear, Toph could admit that at least it gave her one last chance to stretch her bending abilities to their limits after the war with the Fire Nation finally ended.

Running almost as fast as she possibly could while keeping careful track of _his_ pace and exact position so she could make sure that her foot always fell just a moment before his and twisted just _so_ , subtly smoothing the stone to protect him from tripping without wounding his pride. Returning it to its original state, or at least close enough that nobody coming after them would be able to tell the difference, with another small shift when she lifted her foot again. Keeping track of his heart rate, his breathing, every little sign the earth transmitted to her that would warn her if the pace she was driving them forward at was getting to be too strenuous for him. At the same time stretching out her senses as far as they could go to keep track of their pursuers, ready at any instant to open a furrow beneath her feet for them to drop into if it felt like they'd reached a position where they might be seen. All simple enough things on their own, even together for short periods of time, but sustaining that level of focused precision even with her attention split every which way for mile after mile, hour after hour, was _not_ her usual way of doing things and wore on her quickly and made her crave the stone-blunt solutions she usually found to her problems.

The worst thing was that she was in her _element_. With the rocky foothills all around her just ripe for bending, the mountains beyond them close enough that she could bring them into the fight too, everything in her shouted that she should stand her ground and rain painful rocky fury down on her enemies.

The only problem was that it was _their_ element too. And it didn't really matter that she could out-bend every last one of them; if over twenty people were trying to bring the peak towering above the two of them down on top of them all at once even Toph wasn't cocky enough to gamble both of their lives on her being able to block every last one of them before the stone was destabilized.

Well, maybe if they were just your average earth-bending shlubs. But she was absolutely positive that there was a good mix of former Dai Li agents mixed in with them, and those jokers were actually enough of a threat to make her hold back. Only one of them would have to have more talent or more luck than she remembered to bring the mountain tumbling down over them, she could easily imagine what would happen from there. She might be great at taking on multiple opponents at once, but there reached a point where even her attention would be too split. If most of her focus turned to diverting the rock, even for a split second, the benders behind them would put all their force into sending more down. If she turned her attention to them then gravity would woo the avalanche along, picking up speed and force with every inch it traveled. Even if she could hold her attention perfectly split, every bit of the rockfall that managed to leave the ground as it bumped and bounced its way down the slope would leave her sight as well, and without any practice she didn't know if he'd be able to guide her with his sight well enough to catch every flying bit of rubble before one dashed one of their heads in.

It would be so much easier if she could ask him to make the stand alongside her. She knew that he'd do it, and that they would make an incredible team, and that every one of the jerks chasing them would fall before them. But she couldn't ask that of him. She _wouldn't_. Because she understood why he'd needed to be rescued in the first place instead of just blasting them all the way to the Foggy Bottom Swamp. She understood why he'd prodded her to flee in the first place instead of letting her crush the whole nasty fort he'd been held in while she still had the element of surprise. It was stupid, and it was frustrating, and it was _politics_ , but she understood. If even the tiniest little lick of flame touched a single one of their filthy hides they'd take it as proof that they were a hundred-percent right in their thoughts about him, and they would wave that proof in the faces of everyone who was in the least bit sympathetic to their cause until they lured them over to their side.

He wouldn't dare allow that to happen, and risk Zuko losing the precious scraps of good-will that he'd painstakingly managed to build up with the other kingdoms of the world in the years since the war had ended.

There was only one choice then.

They ran.  



	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like most of them are in the show, sandbender names in this fic are drawn from places around the Gobi Desert.

The first time she'd heard about what had happened she didn't even realize it.

She'd been living in the Si Wong Desert for months by then, almost completely cut off from word of the outside world as she trained with the Hami tribe to perfect her sandbending. It wasn't as if she had much else to do; she'd spent her life in the five years since the war idly drifting from place to place, unwilling to go home but equally unwilling to permanently settle down anywhere else. Practicing sandbending on her own had gotten her to the point where she was skilled enough at shaping it but still couldn't "see" anything but fuzzy impressions through it, and that was just _not on_. She might never be able to keep track of the world around her while on the water or in the air, but she refused to believe that there was any type of ground that she couldn't use as her eyes.

And that jerk Ghashiun still owed them a lot more for kidnapping Appa than just the trip out of the desert they'd gotten, so when she'd realized that her travels were bringing her close to the desert without any other plans that she needed to get on with she figured that it was time to call in that debt.

It had been incredibly hot the day word reached them, even by the standards of the desert. She'd been ducking practice out in the sun by helping out with dinner preparations; although she doubted that she'd ever be any good as a cook she was perfectly fine at taking a knife to anything that needed to be chopped, and as long as she stayed out of the way while doing it the clan chefs would let her help out without ratting her out.

The news was only worth gossiping about because outsiders never bothered traveling the eastern edge of the desert. There was nothing at all to be found there, just desolate mountains and eventually the sea. Once in a great while merchant parties would start following the range with visions of new trading routes dancing in their heads, but they always gave up before too long. Slightly more often earthbenders would head in to train their skills against the mountains, but usually they preferred to train in the section of the range closer to her home town, or in the mountains near Omashu or north of Ba Sing Se, places close to civilization in case they were injured or just wanted a day off.

This was neither. It was a group of armed men and earthbenders escorting an old man bound in a prisoner's chains south along the range before bending a path into it that vanished again behind them.

None of them were quite sure what to make of it. They wouldn't be a gang of bandits setting up camp in the mountains, not _there_. There'd be no travelers for them to prey on, and any sandbenders who got close enough to draw their eye would be able to beat them brainless as long as they stayed far enough out on the desert to keep the mountains from providing the strange benders with easy access to solid stone.

It _would_ be a smart place to have built a jail if the Earth King felt like shipping prisoners across Chameleon Bay; any prisoners who managed to escape would find the desert to the west, the bay to the east, the empty mountains to the north and south, and not a single town in any direction for days. But they'd never seen any builders following that path, and it wouldn't make any sense for them to be transporting in a criminal before the prison had ever been made. It was possible that the construction supplies and workers had been brought in by ships over the bay where the sand tribes never had a chance to see them, but why not transport the criminal the same way?

By that evening the rumormill had come up with an answer that it liked. The old man must be a _waterbender_ , people whispered excitedly from one to another. There _was_ a prison, but transporting him over the bay was too dangerous when if he slipped free for just a minute or two he could capsize the boat. In fact, he'd already given them loads of trouble on just the ferry crossing! Why else would there be so many guards with him? Maybe the whole prison had even been made just to house him, out in the middle of nowhere where there was no water to bend.

Toph listened to them, snorted, and had a private word with the group who'd seen the fighters. Once they'd assured her that the prisoner was going along with them peaceably enough, and didn't look like he was only doing so because he'd been tortured until his will broke, she just decided to forget about it. Twinkletoes' heroism hadn't rubbed off on her _quite_ enough for her to feel compelled to go check them out to see if any funny business was going on if it didn't look like anyone was being brutalized.

Later, when she realized exactly what she'd been ignoring, she didn't stop feeling guilty until well after he was safely in her company.

It was only a day and a half later that she found out more.

That day she'd been set to trying to create a well in the desert for her training. She knew that this was the best type of exercise for her if improving her vision through shifting sand was her main goal, it was all about stretching her sight downward to find the shape of the impenetrable holes the water created within the earth and then digging down when she found one big enough to be worth tossing a bucket in when someone got thirsty, but it was still so frustrating. She was getting much better at making out the form of anything on the surface, her mind finally adjusting to the fact that even when the deeper vibrations became muzzy and distorted she could still at least feel solid weight pressing down on the sand from above, but things got fuzzier and fuzzier the deeper they were under the ground.

The earth was supposed to be her closest ally, the one who kept her from ever _really_ feeling blind as long as she stayed in contact with it. Having everything shift and slide and blur by the moment felt a little bit like a betrayal.

So she was more than a little glad when the sound of Hawky II shrieking as he dove towards her pulled her attention away from the frustrating task of trying to feel out the dimensions of the pool of ground water she'd managed to find to see if it would be worth bending down to it.

She carefully removed the small message scroll from the hawk's leg, and waved it in the air. "Hey, could I get a pair of eyes over here?" She knew that whatever it was had to be too important to wait; when the others just wanted to update her on their latest news or say hello they send it along by slower human messengers who could tell her the message themselves. They only used birds and forced her to find someone who could read for her when there was no time to waste.

The letter was plucked out of her hand by Nemegt, the withered old woman who'd volunteered to keep an eye on Toph and make sure she didn't slack off in her training as she went about her own task of forming sand into earthenware plates and jugs and bowls for the traders to sell off the next time they went into town; apparently since there were so few decent sandbenders around it went for a good amount if they could get it watertight while keeping its origins obvious. It annoyed Toph that the old bugbat felt like she _needed_ watching. She _never_ slacked off. During the rare times when she was frying badly enough to try and duck out of whatever lesson she was supposed to be doing she always found something useful to do to make up for it; she wasn't so totally disrespectful that she'd ask them to teach her then flop around doing nothing all the time.

Nemegt didn't wait for Toph's permission to start reading, just began as soon as the thing was in her hand, 'Toph, Iroh's been captured by some crazy Earth Kingdom guys who apparently never got the message that the war's over. The Earth King's message says that they know he was taken over the river because workers on the ferry spotted the boat they used, but his people lost track of them after that. We're trying to figure out where in the world Aang's at so he can get there fast on Appa, but right now you're closest so can you get over there and see if you can find anything out? I'm stuck over here trying to help Mai keep Zuko from going totally nuts before he sends out the whole armada to search for him and people really do start thinking the war's back on. And listen, not to put too much pressure on you or anything but you really really need to find them before the anniversary of the day Azula brought down Ba Sing Se. But for right now just concentrate on how lucky we are that we got the kind of crazy people who want everyone to know how into symbolism they are and not the kind who'd pull out their swords the minute they had him helpless. Sokka."

It was strange. The flat tone of voice that Nemegt droned out the letter in seemed to steady Toph against the heavy dread that had started to fill her right from the word 'captured'; like somewhere deep down she felt like things couldn't _really_ be as bad as they sounded if somebody could sound that uninterested in them. Which she knew was especially dumb since she was friends with _Mai_ and should be used to knowing that the right sort of person could make anything at all sound boring.

But even Nemegt started to sound faintly worried by the time she reached the end of the note; it'd be hard for anyone to sound blase about the possibility of fighting starting up again just because people didn't realize that the army coming towards them was there for a rescue mission instead of a fight. Luckily by then Toph's mind had gone into overdrive trying to think of where she should even start searching for him, and almost immediately it jumped back to the rumors from just a couple of days before. To the old man being held prisoner in the mountains. The mountains where next to nobody _ever_ went. The range that was so long that even if a normal person thought to search there they could hunt for months and never find where a fairly small group of people were hidden within it; months when the anniversary was less than a week away.

But Toph was _not_ a normal person. And she knew right where the group had entered the mountains, giving her a place to start that would put her ages ahead of that hypothetical normal person.

It had to be him. _Had to be._ She refused to believe that the world would suck enough to give her a giant glaring clue about where he was then have it be the wrong place to search. Not when there was so little time to spare, and not after all the good luck they should have earned with that whole saving the world from crazy firebenders thing they'd done. She hadn't done anything that would use _hers_ up since then, and since he'd pretty much spent the whole last five years slinging tea he should have plenty left over too.

"Have somebody write back that I know where he is, and I'm going to get him back," she said, already preparing herself to start jogging off into the desert.

Before she could go more than two steps Nemegt cut her off with a harsh, "Don't be foolish, girl." Toph paused, mouth opening to snap back at her about how important this was, but the old woman didn't let her get a word out. "Do you think we'd make you walk out of the Si Wong? You've been spending too much time with Ghashiun if you think we're all as rude as that boy. Wait, and we'll have a sand-sailor ready for you before your feet could get you out of sight of the village."

Toph had never really liked Nemegt, but in that moment she could forgive every time that she'd been a crotchety old crone to her just for how quickly she'd eased some of the worry that had been twisting in Toph's gut. "Okay, I'll wait a minute," she said, managing to work up a smile. "Thanks."


	3. Chapter 3

Her teacher, Muztagh, ended up being the one to drive her out to the mountains. He waved off her attempts at thanks, just gruffly saying, "You're in my keeping as long as you're here. That means making sure you get out safely too." That was one of the things she liked about him; he was the furthest thing in the world from being some sappy mushball but he still made it clear if he cared about what happened to you.

Before they left he took the time to hunt down one other member of the tribe to bring with them, a woman named Tuva who'd been with the group that had spotted Iroh and his captors. Even though every extra second it took to get moving made Toph more and more twitchy she knew that taking the time to find her would be worth it in the end; a few minutes spent hunting her down would be more than made up for when they knew right where to go when they reached the mountains instead of needing to search for signs of the group. Unfortunately, they weren't far into the trip before Toph started to feel like the hunt would have been less annoying than Tuva was. Toph knew her a little bit--the Hami tribe was so small that it only took a couple of days there before you were at least vaguely aware of everyone--but had only had a few conversations with her and hadn't found her interesting enough during them to ever seek her out for more. But on the trip across the desert, while Muztagh was preoccupied with controlling the sand-sailor, Tuva sat pressed up against Toph's side like they were the best of friends, and did her best to pry any bit of information about Iroh she could get out of Toph.

Toph _knew_ what she was doing, though Tuva did her best to disguise her attempts at information gathering as just friendly chatter. Knew why too. Tuva had quickly proven herself to be the biggest rumor-monger in the party who'd spotted the 'mysterious prisoner'. The past two nights she'd surrounded herself with people eager to hear the story from someone who'd been there, embellishing her version of it more and more each time one group moved on and another took its place. The last time Toph had overheard a snatch of it Iroh had gone from only being bound in standard shackles and walking along of his own volition, which every other person who'd been with Tuva had agreed was the truth, to being wrapped around with so many chains that it was almost impossible to see even a hint of his body through them and being dragged along by a dozen men while he struggled ever inch of the way. Of course she'd want any information Toph could give her; there was only so long that she could hold onto her circle of fans with the same old story everyone already knew.

Luckily nobody else had been close enough to overhear Nemegt when she was reading the letter, and the old women herself knew how to keep her mouth closed. Toph allowed Tuva to have a few scraps of information, but nothing really important; she had good reason to believe the prisoner was an old friend of hers, he lived in Ba Sing Se, he'd stood against the Dai Li when they'd defected to the Fire Nation during the war. All perfectly true, all neatly misleading. She was sure that by the time Tuva got back home she'd have decided to tell everyone that the prisoner was the only loyal Dai Li member, or one of the Earth King's guards, a hero of the war who was now being punished for his loyalty by traitors. The possibility of war flaring up again so soon after they'd finally achieved peace would never need to come up, and she was sure that Muztagh would pick up on what she was doing and not bother trying to rein-in Tuva's flights of fancy.

Even with all the time spent getting the Muztagh and Tuva together and getting the sand-sailor ready they still reached the edge of the mountain range a long, _long_ , time before Toph would have made it there on foot. Once they were at the right spot she said good-bye to her companions.

They argued against letting her go alone of course, or at least Tuva did--"We need to teach these traitors not to mess with friends of Sandbenders!" she said, sending a burst of sand shooting at the mountains like their enemies were invisibly lurking right before them, and even though Tuva was annoying Toph was still a little touched that she counted her as one of them so easily--and she was sure Muztagh would have joined in two seconds later if Toph hadn't glared at him. She was _good_ at glares, or so she'd been told. A pretty tactless boy she'd met on her travels had tried to explain why to her once; according to him her eyes being the way they were made it feel like you were getting the evil eye from a ghost, and the fact that half the time she didn't manage to look straight at whoever she was glaring at just made it creepier, but she didn't actually care about _why_ it shut people up just as long as it kept on working.

And it did that time. Muztagh kept his mouth shut and Tuva quickly ran out of steam. She thanked them for wanting to help but refused the offer, and it didn't take that much arguing before she was climbing the nearest foothill on her own.

Later she would wish that she'd at least asked them to wait with the sand-sailor at the edge of the desert, that she'd been smart enough to have an easy escape waiting for them instead of having to flee on foot. But she hadn't been thinking completely clearly then, focusing on the task of finding and freeing Iroh and not on what came after. Her decision was based entirely on more people meaning a higher chance of one of them being spotted, especially since they couldn't tell if someone was close by but hidden from eyeview the way she could, and the fact that they frankly wouldn't be much help. It was as difficult for a sandbender to bend solid stone without practice as it had been for her to get the hang of sand. Sand bent and flowed like water. It _wanted_ to move and would do so with just the tiniest nudge, though once it started it was as stubborn as any other earth when it came to doing what anyone wanted if they didn't have a will strong enough to match its own. If they'd followed her into the mountains and it came down to a fight, she imagined that it would very quickly go south when the mountain flatly refused to rise at those delicate sandbending nudges.

By the time she'd even realized that they could have done something to help aside from fighting it was too late, and even if she hadn't already been too far into the mountain to turn back they must have been long gone anyway. She didn't worry about it then, she couldn't when she needed to focus on stretching out her senses further than she ever had before to try finding any hints of human presence.

Once she'd gone far enough that she guessed the area she was in wouldn't be visible to people from the ground it suddenly became almost laughably easy to pick up their trail. Up until then when they'd closed the pass they'd created behind themselves they'd done an almost perfect job of it, fusing the stone back together so neatly that she only found occasional hints of it to follow which were so faint that she hadn't been entirely sure that she was even right about them being there. But once they'd gotten deep enough into the mountains to fool most anyone else who might think to search along the range for them they'd become a lot more sloppy.

She guessed that it probably still looked fine to the naked eye, though it was always hard for her to guess exactly what other people could and couldn't see when it came down to the finer details in her surroundings. And the details that clearly gave them away to her were very fine indeed; unnatural deep hairline cracks which slightly distorted her vision when the vibrations hit them, spots where when they'd sealed their homemade pass back together they'd left one side the tiniest bit higher than the other in minute ridges which were much too straight to be natural, mountain plants whose roots made strange little knots in the earth because though they'd been careful enough to stick plants which had come uprooted back into the ground they didn't bother trying to make them have the right appearance below the surface. It was kind of sad that other earthbenders were as quick to make that mistake as anybody else.

Kind of sad in a way she'd never complain about when it was so helpful for her.

It was while she was examining those signs that she found something even more important; following their path into the mountains took her straight to the beginning of a badgermole family's tunnels, although stone had been bent over the entrance to make it blend into the face of the mountain. For the first time since she'd heard Sokka's letter a real grin spread over her face at that discovery. They probably thought that they were so clever, finding a ready-made hideout that was so easily hidden as long as the badgermoles never wanted to use that exit. It would even have been a good plan, if anybody else in the world had been the one to find the area before they'd reached the execution date.

But there was _nobody_ who knew badgermoles as well as she did. It didn't matter that they were different tunnels than the ones she'd known when she was little, she knew the way they built their homes as well as she knew how to breathe, the first place that she'd ever been able to 'see' burned into her mind forever. It was like they'd tried hiding from her by standing right in the middle of her own bedroom.

She broke away from following the kidnappers' path and instead found another branch of the tunnels some distance away, this one running parallel to the one they'd gone down but not connecting to it until a long way into the mountain. As soon as she was standing over one that fit she moved just so and the ground dropped open beneath her, only to close again so perfectly that even she wouldn't be able to find any signs that it had moved to begin with the moment she vanished into the tunnel below.


	4. Chapter 4

Toph spent almost a full day lurking in the burrow just working out where everyone was and whether they patrolled throughout the tunnels or just stuck to the area they'd made their hangout. And 'made' really was the right word for it; they'd bent a whole section of the mountain into their own little criminal compound, the rooms connected by the badgermole tunnels but branching off of them. Probably a smart move. If a mole passed by it probably wouldn't do anything to their hideout as long as the only modifications they made to its home were briefly opening holes to act as doors into the rooms they'd made then closing them right away. Toph suspected that they planned to keep the place as their base of operations even after Iroh was out of the picture; it was way too elaborate for somewhere that they only intended to stay in for a short time.

Though she _hated_ leaving Iroh waiting an extra day for a rescue that he didn't even know was so close, she was happy about what that time had taught her. Their security was _incredibly_ sloppy, they kept a few guards posted inside the entrance they used to the tunnels but aside from that they seemed content to hang around in their hideout. They hardly ever even checked in on Iroh in the cell she'd eventually felt him in, not worried about a firebender who was stuck in a stone room without windows or doors or anything flammable. It wasn't nearly cold enough to dull his bending if he chose to use it, but it was so fire-proof that it wouldn't even matter.

In short, they'd gotten _cocky_. They were so sure that they'd found the world's most perfect hideout that they weren't staying nearly as alert as they should have been, even the Dai Li taking the chance to be lazy when it seemed impossible that anyone would ever find them. And to think, she'd worried that getting him out would be a challenge.

She managed to draft a badgermole into helping her when she finally made her move. It had been way too long since the last time she'd been around one, but even after so much time she still knew how to make herself understood, a sweep of her hand across the stone walls of the tunnel and a small shiver of a tremor sent underneath its paw saying 'Here, follow,' perfectly clearly without any need of sight or voice. Together they built a new tunnel, starting out in the foothills and leading all the way under the range to just beneath the cell where Iroh was being held, yet another long time spent doing something that _wasn't_ yanking Iroh out of their clutches but again it needed to be done. She was covering every base she could think of to make sure their escape would go smoothly, and that meant having their escape route ready right from the start.

For the last stretch of the tunnel she kept herself pressed as tightly against the badgermole's side as she could get, practically snuggling up under its stomach. She'd never met another human earthbender who could see through the ground beneath them the way she could, but there was the occasional person who could at least pick up vibrations that were too faint for others to notice. If anyone like that was in the group of kidnappers she wanted to make sure they'd feel something _big_ and just assume the badgermoles were expanding their home. She didn't want any chance that somebody would pick up even the faintest hint of a lighter human-size creature creeping along with it.

She hated waiting there with Iroh separated from her by nothing more than the thickness of his floor even more that she had while she was casing the joint the day before, but luckily it wasn't long before the tunnel outside of his cell was empty of anyone who might decide to take a peek in on their prisoner at exactly the wrong time. The second the closest enemy was around a curve in the tunnel and heading away she yanked Iroh straight through the floor as quickly as she could without just opening a hole and letting him fall.

"Hey, sorry making you wait," she said by way of greeting as she yanked off the chains binding his hands and feet. "But now that you're safe and sound it's time to yank the mountain down on these jerks' heads."

She raised her hands and braced herself, reaching for weak points in the mountain that she'd already felt out the day before. She wanted to take them down all in one blow if at all possible, just pull down the ceiling of their whole hideout on their heads before they even had a chance to realize what was happening and bend the stone away from themselves. Something inside of her felt twisty and sick about what she planned to do, about being ready to kill so many people so decisively without allowing them any chance at a fair fight even if they were murderers themselves, but she did her best to ignore that feeling. She tried to convince herself that she was being _merciful_ , because a quick end by being crushed flat would definitely be a lot more pleasant than what would happen if Zuko snapped and hunted them down for what they tried to do to his uncle; he'd loosened up more over the years of peace but doing anything to hurt the decent members of his family was a sure way to bring the angry boy he'd once been straight back to the surface.

And it wasn't like she'd never face up to what she'd done, lurking in the hidden tunnel where she'd never need to touch the carnage or the corpses. She couldn't just leave that section of the badgermole tunnels collapsed, after all. As soon as she had Iroh back to civilization and let Zuko know that he could stop freaking out she'd be back to help fix the damage she'd done to their home, and that would mean moving every mashed and mangled body that had gotten caught out in the 'hall'.

But even with all of her justifications she still felt a burst of relief when Iroh grabbed her wrist and told her "Stop."

Still, she felt as if she had to put up an argument for what she'd planned. Getting away would be so much easier if they didn't need to worry about anyone chasing them. "You know they deserve it, Iroh. You weren't the only person who would've died because of them. They would've gotten the whole war going again if they could have."

"Even so." He pushed her hand down, his hold on her wrist gentle but the pressure he put on it firm. "It is very good to see you, Toph, and I'm grateful for your help, but it mustn't go this far. The men here now are not the only members of their group, and if the others find their hideout destroyed and the men within it dead when they arrive to witness their planned execution they wouldn't think that an earthbender friend had come to rescue me. They would use it to justify their actions to themselves and anyone they could find who would listen, insist that it was proof that I am the monster they claim me to be and created an explosion to cause as much damage as possible in my escape. This is _not_ the way to preserve the peace."

"Okay, that would be dumb of them. _Really_ dumb. I'd be the first person to tell anyone who asks that you're a totally awesome firebender, but even you couldn't just make rock explode."

"Hatred is irrational, especially hatred held for so long. And they are already on edge from my not acting the way their prejudices tell them I should."

"Coulda fooled me. You haven't had a chance to see how lazy they're being about patrolling." But she let herself relax at last, shifting her focus momentarily to the badgermole to let it know it could go on its way. "Okay. It's your call if we cream them or not, so okay. But I hope you're ready to run."

She would have thought that they'd have more than enough time to at least get out of the mountain before anybody bothered checking in on Iroh, but before they were even halfway to the entrance she felt people beginning to stampede around in the tunnel above them as they realized Iroh was missing. She probably should have waited until just after someone looked in on him before freeing him, which would have given them plenty of time before the next check, but it wasn't like she'd thought she would be giving them that time when she'd done it. It was distressingly soon after that that she started feeling people dropping into the tunnel behind them, but it was still long enough. Long enough that they managed to get outside before anyone could catch up to them within the confines of the tunnel.

Long enough that they could put the slope of a hill between them and the entrance of the tunnel before anyone else could get out. After that all they could do was try and keep that distance.


	5. Chapter 5

They kept going until they reached a point where they needed to stop and get some sleep or else collapse from exhaustion, and even then managed to push on a little further until they found a small grove of mountain pines that they could use for cover. She made a hole for them to rest in, crumbling the stone at the bottom down to soft sand and pulling in as many pine needles for cushioning as she could without leaving such a giant bald spot that it'd be obvious even from a distance. At least, she hoped so. It was kind of hard for her to judge. "I think this is as comfortable as I can get it."

"I'm sure that it will be better than where I've spent the last several days," he reassured her as he lowered himself into the hole.

She climbed in after him, and as soon as they were both lying flat she closed the ground over them in a low stone ceiling, careful to leave airholes in the rock. "Sorry about this," she said, turning on her side to face him in the cramped space. "I know we're kind of crammed in here, but we're out of sight and, hey, at least it'll be warmer down here than out in the wind while it's not safe to make a fire."

"There's no need for you to explain," he told her, shifting around to get comfortable. "It was wise of you to think of it."

"Hey, that's a compliment I don't hear every day." Sleep was pulling at Toph's mind so hard now that she was off her feet that it wasn't easy to keep holding it off, but this was the first time they'd really had a chance to talk since they started to run and there was something she really wanted to know. "How'd they even manage to nab you? They might be tough, but I bet you could have kicked their butts all the way to Omashu if you'd wanted to."

It took him a moment to answer, and when he finally did she didn't think it was much of one. "It seems as if living in Ba Sing Se always makes me drop my guard in time. A bad habit of mine."

"That's all?" she pressed, unsatisfied. Maybe she was as bad as the gossips after all, because she wanted a story.

"Not every tale has a grand beginning," he said, seeming to read her thoughts. "Now, it's time to rest."

She could tell when somebody was telling her to shut up, even if they were being nice and polite about it, but she didn't get upset about it. It _was_ time to rest; it was kind of amazing that she'd managed to keep her eyes open long enough to have a conversation even that short. And, sure enough, she was asleep almost as soon as she finally closed her eyes.

And was awake again what felt like almost as quickly, when she felt a couple of scouts getting close.

She would have yelled with frustration if staying quiet hadn't been important. It was so disappointing to learn that the scouts were that close when she'd been sure that she'd put more distance between them and their enemies than that. She hardly felt rested at all and now they needed to go again.

She'd made the hole big enough to give them both a good amount of space when she'd opened it up, but with danger so close she wiggled over until she was curled right up against his side and closed the hole up around them as much as she safely could, minimizing the area another earthbender might find off if they were paying close attention to the ground beneath them.

Iroh woke up while she was working, and muzzily began to ask, "What is--" but he was cut off by Toph whipping her hand up to cover his mouth and hissing through her teeth, not wanting to speak at all to silence him and risk someone with incredibly good ears picking up the sound. But she knew Iroh also knew when someone was telling him to shut up, and that was more than enough to make him go silent and still.

It was only a few minutes before the scouts were close enough to hear their voices drifting down the airholes, two of them, not being nearly as quiet as they should. _Not_ Dai Li, she was sure. Years spent without a master might have dulled their vigilance, but now that someone had snuck in under their noses and stolen their prisoner she was sure that they'd be quickly shaking off the sloppiness.

"C'mon, Jie, we're either way off track or went straight past wherever they decided to hide for the night," the first voice, that of a young man, whined. "That old fire-bastard's ancient, there's no way he made it this far on foot. His heart woulda popped or something!"

"You have no idea what you're talking about, Mu," a woman snapped in reply. "This is The Dragon of the West; you mustn't see him as just an old man.

"Oh, that's just a name! It's not like the guy isn't still human. And even dragons aren't invincible; they're all dead, remember?"

"And whose fault do you think that is? If anything it's proof that he deserves a more fearsome title."

"I'll tell you what your problem is, Jie. In your head you built him up into a great big boogyman during the Siege, and now your can't see that he's just a used up old man." Toph had the feeling that they could have gone on bickering that way for miles, but before Jie had a chance to respond Mu burst out, "Wait, what're they--"

" _Shh!_ " Jie cut him off, and they both went completely silent, which might have been a problem for someone who couldn't tell exactly where they were without needing a sound.

But keeping track of them wasn't the primary concern at that moment, as that little exchange had made Toph realize that she needed to pay more attention to what was going on around them; she'd been focusing so much on listening in on their conversation that she hadn't been paying much attention to their surroundings except to make sure that there weren't any other people coming up. She guessed that the Dai Li weren't the only ones getting sloppy from peacetime.

There were a couple of animals wandering around the pine grove who'd been there from the time she'd woken up, before the scouts had even reached it. She'd just written them off as some random local wildlife without bothering to really check them out because the humans and what they had to say had seemed so much more important, but now that she actually took two seconds to notice what they were she realized with a start that they'd been the bigger threat from the start. It was a pair of gopher-dogs, friendly little creatures with a sense of smell that rivaled Toph's sense of "sight" and made them a hunter's best friend even if they were too small to be any help in bringing down prey.

And now they were sniffing around right at the edge of where she'd made her hole.

"Get up!" she shouted at Iroh, urgency making staying quiet pointless. She sent the ground above them flying up to let them out just in time, because even as the hole opened above them she could feel it starting to close in around them without her will behind it. They leapt out to the surface just seconds before it shut up completely, and Toph was hit by a quick flash of white-hot rage. It made her wish with all her heart that she'd ignored Iroh when he wanted to run away without doing anything to stop the group. How could she have felt guilty about preparing to crush them all when they were so quick to do the exact same thing to her and Iroh?

"Hey!" she called out to them, trying to delay the fight until she had her temper back under control. She didn't quite trust herself to jump straight into a brawl if Iroh still didn't want her to _mash_ them. "Didn't you people want to keep him _alive_ for a few more days? Because that sure didn't feel like it to me."

The woman whose voice proved her to be Jie even if the shape of her body hadn't been enough of a hint snorted. "That may be our leader's intention, but I don't intend to give that beast another chance to escape. If there should be an unfortunate 'accident' it would hardly ruin our plans," she said, and spat on the ground like just talking about Iroh left a filthy taste in her mouth. "I'd prefer not to kill one of our own people along with him, little girl, but if you've betrayed your own kingdom to side with him than you deserve nothing else."

"And anyway, there's just two of us!" Mu jumped in, actually physically leaping forward in his eagerness to add his two cents to the conversation. "We aren't gonna give him any chance to fry us with his dragon-breath by trying to snag him alive on our own!"

Toph would've said that it would be hard for them to sink any further down in her regards from the incredibly low depth they'd started at for helping to kidnap and trying to kill Iroh, but that stupidity was already sending them plummeting lower. It should have been obvious to anyone with a half-functioning brain that if he planned to start spewing fire he'd have done it ages ago, long before they ever got him out of Ba Sing Se. If he hadn't done it already he wasn't going to start, even with death nipping at their heels he stayed aware of how how they'd use his actions to stir up negative sentiment against Zuko.

"And people say I'm blind," she said dryly, and took them down so quickly that she didn't even give them a chance to fight back, moving like a shot before she'd even finished talking so they'd be unprepared for the attack. She didn't bother to hold back when they'd been the ones to attack first, and with lethal force, just slammed the earth up to wrap around them as new-born boulders, squeezing them so tightly that they wouldn't even be able to twitch a finger to bend. It wouldn't be impossible for them to get out if they had any real bending skill at all, but they'd need time--King Bumi was the only one she knew who'd be able to shrug it straight off with just a twitch of his nose, though Toph's ego was sure that she'd be able to do the same if she ever _really_ needed to--but that was time they didn't have.

She paused to take care of the gopherdogs, making a stone cage around them because they'd started biting at her ankles when she attacked their masters and it was annoying enough to spare a second to make them quit, and that was what saved the scouts. She wouldn't have killed them, she'd regained enough self-control not to do that, but she _would_ have left them very much the worse for the wear if she'd completed her whole attack all in one burst instead of getting bugged into shifting her attention even if it was for just a minute.

"That's enough," Iroh told her when she turned back to them. "For now they'll be unable to chase us or to return to their comrades and let them know we've been spotted. We'll had plenty of time to get away. There's no need to spend any more time here."

She didn't want to just leave it like that, not with the anger still running in her blood. "It won't take that long to just cream them a _little_. Anyway, there's no way anybody could think _you_ sent stone up to attack them no matter how nuts they are. They couldn't use _that_ against Zuko."

"My nephew's well-being is not the only one that I care for," he chided her gently. "I would prefer if you did not bloody your hands on my account."

Toph found it a little hard to believe that he might actually think she'd managed to keep her hands clean over five years spent traveling alone. She hasn't carved a bloody swath across the world or anything, but even with the war over there were still bandits out there, and the Fire Nation had its own rogue troops who refused to accept that peace had come and were quick to pile onto any member of the Avatar's group that they spotted. It didn't happen often, but there had been times when she wasn't able to live up to Aang's standards of never killing anyone. And there were more times than that when she'd injured someone badly enough that they'd probably never recover. Usually she was a lot more hesitant about it, but she was just so furious at the entire group for going after Iroh when he'd _more_ than made up for the seige by saving Ba Sing Se, and when he wasn't doing anything more sinister than serving the best tea in the city, and for the fact that even if she got him safely away the group was still trying to ruin his well-deserved peace by turning people against him.

At the same time, when he said that it made her feel the same way being around Aang sometime did. Like being near them made her want to be able to live up to the ideal they had of her, and made her feel guilty when she fell short. Like if _they_ believed she was a really good person she actually could be if she just tried a little harder. After all, they were the two wisest guys that she knew, so they probably knew what they were talking about when it came to people.

"Okay, okay, fine," she said, giving in. Instead of continuing to attack she unwrapped a length of the sandbender headwrap she'd been wearing like a scarf ever since leaving the desert, thankful for the convenient spare cloth it provided as she tore off strips of it to gag the two. "When your cronies find you you'd better not forget that the scary 'Dragon of the West' is the reason you're getting out of this without a scratch on you," she told them as she crumbled the boulders she'd encased them in back down to the earth, only leaving their hands and feet encased in stone cuffs. "...Well, as long as you're good at balancing," she added with a wicked grin, and suddenly sent stone pillers shooting up beneath them.

The pillars suddenly dipped when they were high above the ground and deposited each of them neatly in the tops of two of the sturdiest looking pines in the grove. They were only just low enough for the branches to be strong enough to support them instead of being the thin wispy things at the very tips of the trees. She was even nice enough to send up a couple of other pillers to nudge them around until it felt like they were securely seated instead of teetering precariously where she'd dumped them before she finally pulled the stone back to it's former resting place much too far below Mu and Jie for them to use in bending.

"And that's that," she said cheerfully, wiping her hands of the two of them. "It'll be nobody's fault but their own if they fall, and that cloth's so thin that they'll be able to rub through it on the bark and yell for help not too long after we're out of here if they don't mind scratching up their faces."

It was a little harder to think of what to do with the gopherdogs. They were just innocent pets, she didn't want to hurt them, but if she let them go they'd just run straight back to their humans and lead them to the grove and onwards from there. It would even be easier for them to pick up the scent than ever now that she and Iroh both smelled strongly of the pine needles they'd used as a bed. After a moment she decided that there was really only one choice; she'd have to take them along with them for the time being. Once they were far enough away that they wouldn't be able to find their way straight back to the kidnappers she could take the time she didn't have then to decide whether to set them free or find someone else to give them to.

"Here, sit down next to the cage," she told Iroh, pushing him in its direction. " _One_ of us might as well get some rest, and these creeps are so much closer than I thought that it's kind of pointless to keep trying to be discrete by staying on foot."

"And what of your rest?"

"Don't worry about me, old man, I've still got all that energy of youth on my side," she told him, trying to keep her tone light. The declaration was kind of undercut by the yawn that escaped her just moments later, but fortunately by then she'd turned her back on him so he didn't see it. Once he was settled she lifted the ground beneath them into an earthwave, keeping the area beneath Iroh and the gopherdogs as steady as she could so he might be able to get some sleep as she carried them deeper into the mountain.


	6. Interlude One

On the other side of the world, in the Fire Lord's personal chambers, Mai calmly sipped from a glass of juice and tried to ignore the way all the candles in the room were going crazy as her husband shouted. She would have preferred a cup of tea, the juice too sweet for her tastes, but as everyone had learned when an unfortunate servant had brought Zuko a cup of keemun the morning after they'd received word of Iroh's capture just the scent was enough to make him more upset than ever.

"'I know where he is'?!" he shouted, waving the small scrap of paper Hawky II had brought back from Toph. "And she couldn't have let _me_ know too?"

"Watch it with the fire!" Sokka yelped, diving to try and put out a candle that was threatening to set a wall-hanging ablaze with its now meter-high and growing flame without burning himself. "You know we're, uh, kinda lucky she was even able to let you know that much. It's not like she can just scribble off a note."

"But since she did she _should_ have named a place! A _direction_ even! It's not like your bird can tell us which way she set out," Zuko went on yelling, then whirled around and glared at Hawky II, perched on the back of a chair, like he'd personally offended him and spat out, " _Can_ you?"

Sokka edged back from Zuko like he was afraid to get too close in case he was completely snapping, but Mai just sighed and set down her glass with a soft clink. In the brief lull in Zuko's shouting she quietly put in, "Zuko, stop. You're starting to sound like you'll be going the way of your sister." Zuko flinched visibly, and Mai knew that it had been a cruel shot, but she also knew her husband well enough to be sure that at that moment not much else would have gotten through his head with enough impact to make him quiet down and listen. "If she deliberately kept you in the dark and didn't just forget to pass that information along than it's most likely because she knew that if she told you you'd already be on your way to join them. I doubt that anti-Fire Nation rebels would respond well to the Fire Lord himself attacking them."

"Whose side are you on?" Zuko snapped back at her, hurt now tinging his voice through the anger.

"The side which doesn't lead to my husband causing an international incident and possibly getting himself killed because he was too enraged to notice the rogue earthbender sneaking up on him."

Seeing that Mai's approach actually seemed to be working to quiet Zuko down Sokka quickly added, "But nobody'll ever have a chance of sneaking up on Toph. And, hey, you know she practically likes Iroh better than any of us, and we're her best friends! There's no way she'd let anything happen to him on her watch. Just as soon as she gets to him he'll be totally safe."

All around the room the flames on the candles slowly dimmed until they were back at their normal and when Zuko spoke again his voice was more lost than angry. "Even Toph's just one girl, and these guys managed to capture Uncle so easily that nobody noticed a thing until his neighbor stopped to see why the teahouse wasn't open the next day. They need back up against an enemy like that."

"Well, yeah, but isn't Iroh like a hundred years old? Not really at the top of his game anymore, you know?" Sokka said, waving off Zuko's concern.

"He isn't even seventy yet!" Zuko burst out, but though his voice was raised again this time it was just regular Zuko-annoyance instead of his previous rage.

"If you'd feel better if someone else joined them, it's not as if we don't have options," Mai cut in again, and reached up to grab Zuko's wrist and pull him down to sit beside her before they could start bickering over Iroh's general health and strength level for a man his age. "Even if we still haven't been able to find Aang, we do know people in the Earth Kingdom that we could ask to search for them. People who are very skilled at tracking, even if they can't move with the speed of a flying bison."

Sokka squinted at her like now _she'd_ started talking crazy. "Do we really want to trust June with something like this?"

Mai rolled her eyes, wondering why she'd even expected him to be able to pick up a hint. "Send a message to your girlfriend," she told Sokka, the 'you moron' obvious in her voice even if she didn't actually say it. "I'd write to Ty Lee, but Suki's the one with the pull."

She could practically see the dawning realization in Sokka's eyes. "Hey, that's a pretty good idea Mai!"

"Of course. One of us needs to be able to keep their brain in a crisis," she said, and reached out to pick up her juice once more.


	7. Chapter 7

Toph took them as far as she could that night, not stopping until she was so tired that she didn't feel like she could even shift a pebble two inches to the right. The day before they'd stuck to the foothills while they ran, the low slopes much easier to traverse on foot than the high peaks and to get around quickly enough to stay out of sight, but with the earth itself being the one to move them she had it pull them deep into the mountains. She knew that if they could just make it through the range they were much more likely to find a town on the side facing the ocean than they were on the edge of the desert, and towns meant crowds that they could vanish into and ways to get messages out to their allies. Towns meant safety.

The place where they stopped really was where she'd reached her absolute limit. Every time that she'd thought she just _had_ to go to sleep before then she forced herself to push on just a little further, a little higher, on and on. By the end the wave of earth they rode held them only centimeters above the still ground below them and was crumbling by the second. When they reached the spot where they finally came to rest it was less that they really 'stopped' and more that her abilities refused to support them anymore and they all-but fell through the last remains of the wave.

"Sorry," she said, the word coming out so slurred from weariness that it was hardly intelligible. Sorry for the fall and sorry for where it had happened, a cold and rocky stretch of mountain that made their previous pine needle lined hole look like a bed fit for a king in comparison, but she couldn't dredge up the energy to say more than just the one word.

But she was sure that he understood. "There's no need for you to apologize," he told her, for a moment resting an affectionate hand on top of her head. "I doubt that I have ever met another earthbender who could have done as well as you did today, even Bumi himself."

She managed a smile, but didn't have time to enjoy the praise. There were still things that she needed to do before consciousness failed her completely. The Hami had given her a bag of supplies when she'd left the village, and she dug around until she found a couple of pieces of dried meat to toss to the gopherdogs so they'd hopefully stay quiet through what was left of the night. She knew that she and Iroh should probably eat some too, but even chewing felt like it would wipe her out at that moment. She closed her eyes instead, concentrated on dragging up the last remaining dregs of her energy, and slammed up a small stone "tent" just large enough to hold the two of them before it could slip out of her grasp. And that was officially her limit; she couldn't even find it in herself to soften the stone they'd be lying on into dirt again. She was perfectly fine with sleeping on solid stone, but she wished she could make it a little more comfortable for him.

"Least it stops the wind," she mumbled, and pushed him towards it. What she'd meant to just be a nudge ended up being more forceful than necessary; something in her seemed to snap from putting just the small amount of weight on him that a push took and her body slumped forward to let him support more and more of her weight so she didn't need to carry it herself. Since it was his back she was leaning against she really hoped that he just thought she meant to shove him that hard and didn't notice the truth. She was at least able to hold herself up enough so that her hand was the only thing that made contact with him instead of her whole body dropping against him to make her weakness obvious. She let him enter the tent first to make sure there was enough room for both of them--not that she'd be able to make it any larger if it wasn't, but she could just sleep outside of it if necessary--then climbed in after him.

It was _probably_ large enough that she could have kept a tiny amount of space between them if she'd cared to, but instead she settled down with her back pressed against his. She felt a bit shy about doing it, but quickly excused it to herself a using body heat to keep both of them warmer. The mountain really _was_ cold as high up as they were.

She looked forward to the next morning, when hopefully they'd finally have a chance to actually talk instead of spending all their time either focused on fleeing or being too tired to have a conversation when they were finally able to stop. It sucked that she'd been around one of her favorite people for almost a full day, _two days_ if she counted the time lurking around the kidnapper's hideout even if he didn't know she was there, and they'd only managed to find about five minutes to chat in between everything else. She wanted to be able to tell him what living in the desert was like, and ask him if he planned to go back to Ba Sing Se when things settled down or if he'd try starting up a new teahouse in the Fire Nation where it would be safer. She wanted to ask if he'd ever thought of making one in one of the Water Tribes, since she'd bet that they'd always be up for a hot drink and didn't have a grudge against him personally the way people who couldn't forget about the siege did.

She was pretty sure that just being able to slow down enough to talk the way friends were supposed to would make getting chased a lot less stressful. But she wanted to be able to do something to ease a little of that stress _then_ , while it was at what she guessed would be its worst. She felt a little like she was being a bad friend by not trying to give him any comfort.

So before she let herself drop off to sleep again at last she reached back, her arm feeling like it was wrapped around in weights trying to drag it back down the entire time she was holding it up to move it, and found his hand where it was resting on his thigh to give it a squeeze. She made him a promise then and there in the dark, concentrating hard on getting the words out in full understandable sentences; "Don't worry about being forced to do anything that'll mess things up for Zuko, okay? Just stick with me and we'll get to safety without you ever needing to throw a single spark."

She drifted off almost as soon as the words left her mouth, still holding onto his hand.


	8. Chapter 8

At least it was morning the next time she was woken up by the feeling of people approaching all over again. That was the only good thing she could find about the situation. It was very very _early_ in the morning, so early that the birds hadn't even gotten up yet to start their dawn song--if there were even enough birds that high in the mountain to make the usual riotous morning chorus, which she wasn't completely sure of--but morning all the same. If she'd been able to sleep until morning she was sure she'd be able to pull together enough strength to start running again. She had to believe that, even if the way she actually felt didn't really go along with the belief.

It was so _frustrating_ to her. How could they have already caught up again? She did know what the logical answer was, that her earthwave had left an obvious trail since she hadn't bothered to tidy up after it and that they had enough people to keep up the chase all night long by having one person bend a wave while others rested behind them and switching off when the bender started to run out of strength, but she was too tired and bothered to really care about logic.

She didn't jump straight into running this time, not yet. She'd already let them drive her to her limits once, and if she just jumped straight from sleeping to running it would only happen again, much faster. They were still far enough away that she had a little bit of time. Time to yank the mess the gopherdogs had made in their cage down into the ground so the poor things wouldn't need to wander around in their own waste, to widen it a little so they'd have more room to move around, and to create a dip in the stone that could work as a bowl to give them water in. Time to force herself to gobble down a hunk of meat and a few pieces of dried pear of her own when she gave the animals their breakfast. Time to squat down behind a low rock, one naturally there instead of wasting even a drop of her strength bending better cover, to take care of her morning business. She rushed through all these things as quickly as she could, but it was only once they were complete that she pulled up the ground beneath them and took off like a shot.

She tried as hard as she could not to wake up Iroh, figuring that at least one of them could get enough sleep, but even though she tried to keep the earth directly below him as still as possible--a raft of stone in the moving stream of dirt--he woke up almost immediately. She blamed it on the gopherdogs; even if she'd managed to keep his spot as steady as it had been all through the night it wouldn't have mattered much when they started yapping as soon as they began to move. "I was trying to let you sleep," she told him as she aimed for where she felt an empty space between peaks. Once they were through it they'd be going downhill, which she really looked forward to. Downhill was practically a rest period, the wave would pull itself down like an avalanche and all she'd need to do was make sure it stayed under control. It would give her a chance to really wake up.

"I would rather be awake," Iroh told her "Even if, for my nephew's sake, I can't be much help in a fight, I still wish to offer you as much support as I can. Toph, you mustn't feel as if you should take all the stress upon yourself and try not to bother me. This is hardly the first trying time that I've lived through."

She felt grateful for those words, so grateful that it made her feel choked up though she blamed that on still being too tired to have her emotions act normal, but expressing it felt too awkward so instead she just said, "There's food and water in my bag, it's all just dried stuff but go ahead and help yourself," and focused on pushing them forward. This time she kept her wave low, a slow roll over the land that she was more careful about smoothing out behind them. Part of her hated needing to do it, because even though they were moving faster than they would have been on foot she could still go much much faster if she didn't need to worry about hiding their passage and could just tear across the landscape. But doing _that_ was part of what had let their enemies catch up so fast. She didn't spend the energy needed to leave the mountain face looking perfect again, or even seeming all that great to her own senses though she could at least hope it would be less clear to people seeing with their eyes, but it muddled their trail enough that their pursuers would need to slow down too and pay attention. Once she was more awake she might even make a few false paths, just roughing up the ground in some other direction far enough to make the kidnappers waste time splitting up not being that much of a drain on her strength.

On and on they went, the sun rising and gradually climbing in the sky, until they were suddenly brought up short by reaching a massive lake hidden in a valley deep in the mountains, stretching out so wide before them that its far shore was only a little closer than the edge of her sight.

Toph couldn't help herself; she yelled out loud, the sound half snarl, as exhaustion finally got the better of her at this new obstacle and made her cool snap. She'd needed to go too slowly to begin with, and now they needed to go the long way around when they already didn't have enough time and when they'd be heading into the slow uphill climb on the other side, and she _hated_ that stupid lake! She released all of that sentiment in her shout, keeping just enough control to realize that screaming it out in words would make her sound like a little kid having a tantrum and hold back. She didn't really want Iroh seeing her that way.

When she was all shouted out Iroh stepped up behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders, rubbing them in calming circles. "This is not the end of the world. How far behind are they now?"

"Far enough that I can't tell where they are anymore," she told him, stretching out her 'sight' as far as she could while she answered to make sure she was telling the truth.

"Then there is another way."

There were trees growing around the lake, so tall that it seemed likely that no lumberjacks had ever made it that far into the mountains. He felled one with a fierce burst of flame then while she waited, curious about where he was going with this, shaped a portion of it into a rough rowboat, excess going to oars. "Now we can go straight across, and _you_ can have a chance to get more rest. It may not be as quick as your method, but by the time anyone is close enough to see us we'll be much too far across for their attacks to reach and we'll surely reach the other shore before they do." He held up an oar with joking pride and informed her, "I may not look it, but I was quite an oarsman in my day!"

"A boat. Great," Toph said flatly, but lifted the ground to slide it into the water. It said something about just how tired she was that blinding herself by going out on the water actually seemed worth the chance to sit down for awhile. She trusted him to get her safely across anyway. He wouldn't let her fall out and drown any more than she'd let him be captured again.

Before she climbed into the boat she stopped to crumble the cage she'd held the gopherdogs in, letting them free. They couldn't exactly overbalance the boat by loading in a big stone cage, after all, and having a couple of excitable little animals running around loose in it wouldn't be any smarter. There was no way that even their sharp noses would be able to follow a scent over the water so letting them go wouldn't be dangerous. They'd be able to meet up with their people again before they even had a chance to get hungry, she thought, but just in case she dumped out all the dried meat she'd brought with her, only saving two pieces for her and Iroh's lunch. Losing the meat wouldn't matter; they still had the dried fruit and preserved vegetables and even in the mountains there was fresh prey to be found. Over her years alone she'd gotten good at using her bending to hunt, finding animals by their footsteps on the ground then smacking the stone up around them before they even realized they were in danger. They might not have time to butcher whatever she could find properly, but they could at least cut off a few hunks and Iroh could toss flames at them until they were cooked. She gave each of the gopherdogs one last head scratch as they dug into their sudden bounty.

Once that was done she turned back to the lake and suddenly realized that pushing the boat into the water before she was ready to get into it hadn't been the smartest idea. It couldn't have been floating more than a couple of feet above the lake-bed, but a couple of feet was more than enough to steal it from her sight. She walked right up to the edge of the water following the groove that had been made by the boat moving across the ground, and swung her arms out to see if she would hit it. She could hear the waves splashing against its wooden sides, but sound alone wasn't enough to let her pinpoint the exact spot and she didn't want to risk looking like a complete idiot by splashing in where she thought she heard it only to be a meter off. Not that she didn't look stupid anyway, if Iroh was facing her.

Which he must not be, if he hadn't offered to help yet.

So she guessed that her choice was to either wait there until he turned his attention away from whatever was holding it and saw her standing there flailing at nothing, or just suck it up and ask him for help. It still rubbed her the wrong way, a little, to ever outright admit it during the rare times when her blindness actually felt like it disabled her, though she'd gotten better at asking for assistance without feeling like people were looking down at her and thinking she was weak. She could joke about not being able to read, or to check out art, because those were things she didn't really care about. It was different when it was something that _mattered_. But she remembered what he'd told her back when they'd first met. There was nothing wrong with getting help from someone that loved you.

"Um, Iroh? Can you get me to the boat?" she asked, still reaching out in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, she'd be able to find it on her own at the last second. She heard him turning and realized that the boat was off to the side from where she was searching, his movement a more distinct noise to home in on than the splashing when waves were also splashing against the shore, and rocks in the water, and any number of other things. She started to turn towards him, but as she did his hand seemed to appear out of nowhere as it wrapped around hers and guided it to the side of the boat.

"Will you need any help getting in?" he asked, but she automatically started shaking her head before he'd finished the question. She'd admitted to needing enough help already, she could manage it from there.

"This I can do," she told him, and swung herself up over the side. Just for a moment the boat leaned dangerously far over at her weight pulling at it, but she got herself into place before it could tip and it settled down after just a moment of rocking. If they were out in the middle of the lake it would be terrifying to her, tilting around like that while she was unable to see what was happening or if there was anywhere close enough for her to be pulled to safety if it tipped, but it wasn't really _that_ bad while they were still sitting in water that she knew was shallow. "Hold off on showing off those oar skills for a second, okay?" she told him once the boat settled down. "I might not be a waterbender, but I can still give us a little extra burst to get started."

She turned back to the shore, raising her hands and focusing on making contact with the earth even though she wasn't touching it then pulled them swiftly towards her, dragging a column of stone out of the ground the same movement and making it slam into the back of the boat like a hammer smacking into a nail. The boat shot out onto the water and she waved back towards the shore, calling out to the gopherdogs that might not even still be there, "Goodbye, you yappers!" Then she turned back towards Iroh at the front of the boat and asked, "So, what were you paying attention to while I was flailing around like an idiot?"

"Forgive me for that," he told her, sounding much more cheerful than was appropriate for an apology, but his next words made his happiness understandable. "Today we've had good luck! While I was choosing a tree I found ironwart growing, and I took a moment to make us each a wooden mug so I could prepare tea for our trip across the lake. Unfortunately there is no kettle, but if I heat the water with my breath of fire and allow it to seep while I row it should do well enough. After all, the only other option is having no tea at all!"

He sounded so glad that it made her wish she'd thought to ask her friends in the Hami tribe to pack tea leaves in with the rest of her supplies so he wouldn't have to do without, but at the time she hadn't been paying attention to _what_ they tossed in.

To take her mind off of not being able to see while he worked on the tea she said, "You know, this reminds me of when we first met."

It took him a moment to respond--he couldn't exactly talk while warming the water--but when he did it was to misunderstand. "Ah yes, I made you tea then too, didn't I?"

"Well, yeah, but you've done that tons of times," she said, leaning against the side of the boat and letting her hand drag in the water to give herself something more than the rocking of the boat to feel how they were moving. "I mean being chased, and chased, and _chased_ until I'm so tired I'm snapping at nothing. That was the only other time it's happened." She closed her eyes with a sigh and added, "Try not to let me storm off if I get too cranky this time, okay? I doubt it'll happen, but just in case. I don't think I'll be lucky enough to accidentally attack another guy who's so good at helping me get my head on straight if I do that again."

She jumped at the feeling of his hand covering hers, not used to anybody being able to get close enough to touch her without her feeling their actions coming or any other warning, but he just turned her hand palm-upwards and pressed her cup into it. "This will help you calm yourself before you can reach that point," he told her. "But don't drink it just yet! Enjoy the warmth and the fragrance for now, and before you know it it will be ready to drink."

It _was_ enjoyable. The scent didn't do as much for her as it did for him, but the warmth soaking through the cup to her hands and the spot on her stomach where she rested its bottom, combined with the steady bobbing of the boat, lulled her half into a doze before he told her that it had finished brewing. It was tempting to drain it down quickly and let that doze take over her mind again, but it would be wrong to just swig down a cup of _his_ tea instead of taking the time to savor it. So instead she took a long slow sip, and sighed as the warmth flowed through her body. "It's good, but I think I like the tea from back then better," she told him honestly.

"It would be better if I was only able to properly prepare it," he agreed, "but beggers mustn't be choosers."

"And it's still way better than I would've guessed tea made out of leaves that were just randomly growing on a mountain could be. But that's why you're the tea guy!" It grew on her as she drank more, though it might not have been the flavor itself so much as the calming effect he'd mentioned. She really needed some calm. Either way, by the time she reached the bottom of her cup she'd decided that once they were back to civilization she'd give a 'properly prepared' cup a shot and see how she liked that.

She got the feeling that he'd been waiting for her to finish, because as soon as she sat the cup down he said, "Now, lie down and rest."

"If you won't let me let you get any extra sleep, you shouldn't expect me to either!" she argued, immediately sitting straight upwards and trying to shake herself out of her doze. But before it had a chance to do any good he took hold of her shoulder and tried to gently push her back down.

"That is a very different situation," he told her firmly. "You have been burning energy almost constantly since the moment you heard that I was in trouble, while I've done almost nothing but rest while you did all the work since we stopped running yesterday. I had no more need for sleep this morning, but you're on the edge of burning out. Being rescued would not be worth seeing you ruin your health for my sake."

What could she do then but give in? She couldn't very well let him feel guilty about being saved. She flopped down in the small amount of space available, her head ending up on his knee. "You know," she said as she tried to get comfortable, "I thought I'd seen the last of being chased with the end of the war. Stupid of me, huh?"

"I'm sorry that it's happening again because of me."

"You don't need to be." She turned onto her side and curled her hand around his shin. "I can't think of anybody who'd be more worth it."


	9. Interlude Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry that there's been such a long gap between updates! Not long after putting up the last part I was hit with such a massive case of writer's block that even editing things that were already written made my brain blank out, and it's embarrassing to admit it but when I finally got over it I'd completely forgotten I'd never finished posting all the parts to this.
> 
> I'm also sorry that after such a long break I'm coming back with such a short part; the interlude's, though important to the endgame, are less full chapters and more just 'Meanwhile, back at the Fire Nation...' glimpses. But I'll be back on a chapter a day schedule after this, so you won't need to wait long for more!

Now that Zuko had finished most of his raging he'd switched to spending his time in the library, his duties temporarily falling to the wayside as he poured furiously over every book and scroll he could find that was at all related to the political history between the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom. He went over old truces and treaties, the causes and endings of old wars before the great one, everything he could find all the way back to the beginnings of the two lands.

To Mai and Sokka and everyone else looking in on him from the outside it was to all appearances a frustrating task. Bad enough that it was such a broad subject, covering everything from marriage treaties to agricultural deals, but during the years of the war Zuko's family hadn't cared that much about keeping the records that proved their nation had once peacefully coexisted with the others in decent condition. They were viewed as a sign of a shameful past when they'd been weak enough to make deals with, even concessions to, those they saw as their lessers. It was a little amazing that they'd even allowed that section of the library to continue to exist, even if it was ignored and uncared for. Even more amazing that Iroh, and through his teaching Zuko, realized that diplomacy was actually a thing that could be done and not just another word for strong-arming everyone into agreeing to whatever you wanted.

Mai found Zuko still there when she search him out after Hawky II returned from his latest journey. "Your uncle will be so proud when he comes back and learns that you've finally started studying your history on your own," she teased as she pulled up the chair beside him.

"That isn't funny, Mai," he told her, setting his current book down and rubbing his eyes. He looked like he was exhausted on every level and fighting valiantly against it.

"Yes it is. You're just too close to the situation to realize it now. But I understand." She pushed her chair closer to him, near enough that she could reach up and rub his temples. He was starting to get his 'a vein in my forehead is two second away from popping' look.

"This is _important!_ One of these books has to have _something_ I could use as precedent for going over there without anyone throwing a fit over it. It shouldn't be a big deal!" He angrily shoved the book even further away from him, like he was disgusted with the whole thing. "In fact, I'm making a new Fire Nation Law; if insane rebels _here_ ever kidnap royalty from the Earth Kingdom or the Water Tribes or... or one of Aang's descendants someday, their family is free to come rescue them. Now the Earth King just needs to copy us, as a... a gesture of solidarity."

"'Gesture of solidarity'? Those treaties are starting to rub off on you. Iroh really _will_ be proud," she said, thinking even as she did that she really needed to find a way to make him rest before he started changing all Fire Nation policy to anything he thought might bring Iroh back more quickly. Or possibly see if she could declare herself Fire Lady Regent for reason of the Fire Lord's temporary mental incapacitation and get on with the day to day running of the nation while he was allowed to wallow in his obsession in peace until his uncle returned. He _was_ very good at obsessing, so trying to stop him might not do much good.

But for the moment she just offered him the latest news. "Suki sent a reply. She said to let you know that she and the other Kyoshi warriors will set out as soon as they have a boat ready. She's sent another message to the Earth King asking him to send word to the desert if Toph and Iroh turn up in Ba Sing Se so her warriors will know right away if they can call the search off, but in case they don't go there she wants us to try thinking of places Iroh might head for shelter." Suki also wanted to let him know that the reason she wanted those places was because she wasn't sure how their tracking skills would hold up when their starting point was a desert and that they might well need to guess at where to focus their search, but Mai decided to hold off on passing on that part for the time being. Just then he needed his mind eased by the good news, not wound up even worse by the bad. "She had good news; Katara was visiting and will go along with them to make sure their ship has smooth waters and to give her opinion on where Toph might go if she's the one picking their destinations."

 _That_ caught his attention. "Katara? What about Aang? Isn't he with her?"

"I’m afraid not. But she passed on word that he'd planned to visit the Northern Air Temple after dropping her off. We've already sent another messenger hawk."

He actually relaxed a little at last, though she doubted that anyone else would have been able to notice. "Thanks, Mai," he said, letting his hand drop down to squeeze her knee. "I'm glad I've got you to take care of that type of thing while I'm busy here."

"Just making sure that you remember how lucky you are."


	10. Chapter 10

Toph and Iroh managed to keep away from the group all the way to the other side of the mountains and onwards, though the time it had taken to cross the lake had closed the distance between them enough that she was never again able to get far enough ahead to lose track of their location. By that night they'd decided to stop bothering to even try to get a full night's rest in one stretch, both realizing how hopeless that would be. Instead they only stopped long enough to snatch quick naps and then keep moving.

It wasn't enough, not _nearly_ enough, and Toph just felt more and more drained to the point where resting until she merely felt exhausted seemed refreshing in comparison to the bone-deep fatigue that weighed her down most of the day. From time to time she even allowed Iroh to carry her on his back and proceed on foot because her head began to swim when she tried to bring up a new wave to carry them. She'd thought that first night that she'd found the limits of her energy, but it started to seem like every hour had her finding new ones as desperation forced her to dig deeper and deeper into herself to drag out scraps of strength she hadn't even known she had. She hoped that it would at least leave her stronger when they finally escaped the whole mess they were caught in..

She hoped that it wouldn't kill her before they could.

She was learning new depths of fear as well, depths that felt like they drove her pride in her skills and ego straight out of her. She'd never before faced a fight that she wasn't sure she'd be able to beat if she just tried hard enough or thought sneakily enough, but now she knew with perfect clarity that if she and Iroh were caught they would die. They would die without even putting up any kind of real fight, it didn't matter if Iroh decided to join in for their last stand or not. She thought that he would at last if it came down to it, that he would fight when it was a matter of _her_ life and death even if he wouldn't do it for himself.

Their enemies could rest. They could switch off duties. They could afford to never let anyone get too worn out. They weren't running on the dregs of the dregs of the dregs of their energy. If they were able to catch up than the Dragon of the West and the Avatar's earthbending instructor would be unceremoniously crushed in the middle of nowhere, and, though she was sure that they'd parade word of Iroh's death across every corner of the kingdom, her friends and family might never even know what had happened to her.

Beyond that she was becoming more and more afraid that they might be going in the completely wrong direction. She wanted to believe that as long as she kept the mountains at her right side they had to be heading towards civilization, that was what _felt_ right, but her brain was more wrapped up in paranoia than logic and she just couldn't seem to trust herself. Not when there were no landmarks around that she recognized to make sure they hadn't gotten turned around. She wanted to ask Iroh to check out the stars, or shadows, or whatever it was people with working eyes did to figure out their direction when they didn't have a compass, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. It would be too embarrassing to admit that her sight was failing her in any way while she was standing on solid land. She just had to trust that he'd never spoken up to ask why they seemed to be doubling back, or heading towards nothing at all, because she had it right.

But just when it was starting to feel like she'd sink into despair, Toph finally found something to be hopeful about. A town had appeared at the edge of her sight, the first that they'd reached in their entire time running. She told Iroh to keep an eye open for it, and it wasn't long before he could spot it on the horizon himself. Somehow she found the energy to pick up their speed, hope making it feel like the earth almost leapt at her call again as they zoomed towards it, until all at once she stopped dead with her earthwave crumbling into pieces around them.

She _knew_ that town. She hadn't been able to make out the details when she first noticed it, but she did. If she'd been coming at it from the other direction she would have known at once, the lay of the land around it telling her clearly where she was, but she'd never approached it from the east before.

"We're not going there," she told him. She tried to make her voice stay flat but couldn't keep a tremble out of it. Hopefully he'd just think it was from weariness.

"Why not?" he asked, obviously confused. "You seemed so happy when you first discovered it."

She shook her head, not wanting to explain, then latched onto his arm and tried to pull him around like turning him so he couldn't see the town might somehow make him lose interest in it. "You trust me, right? Then trust me when I say we shouldn't go there!"

"Of course I trust you," he told her, still sounding baffled. "If you wish to avoid that town we shall. Where there is one settlement there will soon be more."

" _Thank you_ ," she said fervently, flashing him a smile before she got them going again. She set a course that would take them in a wide circle around the town, hopefully too far for him to get a good look at it.

She knew that she was being silly, and that she normally would scoff at the idea of it being a bad omen, at the idea that bad omens even _existed_ , but she couldn't help it. Being chased the way they were again, and being with Iroh again, she absolutely couldn't stand the thought of letting him set foot that same abandoned village. Azula had almost killed him with her fire there once, and she couldn't shake the dreadful feeling that if he returned there in such similar circumstances their pursuers would finish the job.

Still, she knew that she needed to give Iroh something more than the non-explanation she'd just offered, even if he was ready to accept it. She didn't want him to start worrying that she'd gone completely nuts. Slowly, not really liking to say it, she said, "I know where we are now. I know where we can go to definitely get shelter instead of needing to search for it. Holding on a little longer to get there will be safer than risking them catching us while we're still banging on doors looking for someone to let us in."

"Ah, you should have said so to begin with!" he said, sounding more cheerful.

She didn't reply, too caught up in thoughts of where they'd be going. For the first time in days even the enemies chasing them stopped being at the forefront of her mind.

For the first time in five years, Toph set herself towards home.


	11. Chapter 11

Part of her thought that that maybe she'd unconsciously been heading there ever since she'd freed him. She'd made excuses for it--that they had to stick to the mountains and foothills because they gave them protection from being spotted, that she couldn't expect a man of his age to run across the hot desert right after being freed from captivity so she couldn't head back to Sha-Mo's people and ask them to make space for him or give them a ride to Omashu, that she couldn't take him back to Ba Sing Se even though it was so much closer than almost anywhere else because he wouldn't be safe in the place they'd snatched him out of to begin with--but when she was running and frightened and half-feeling like she'd never be safe again, maybe somewhere deep inside all she wanted to do was get to her home where she knew they'd always protect her.

Even if that protection had been stifling enough to drive her away for half a decade.

They reached Gaoling so early in the morning that it still counted as night. She let her wave dissolve and lead him through the city on foot, fighting off the exhaustion to keep her back straight and proud even if there was no one awake to see them as they walked straight to the estate. The gate was locked but that didn't matter, it was the work of a second to open a quick hole in the wall to let them in then closing it back up behind them. For just an instant all the fear and weariness were pushed out of her mind by the weight of nostalgia and it felt just like the old days, sneaking in and out through the wall to get to the Earth Rumble without anybody ever being the wiser.

She felt where the guards were and allowed a group to spot them, laughing out loud when the leader confronted them with a "Halt intruders! Don't even try to get away!"

"You guys are new, aren't you?" she asked, digging the seal that she'd carried with her all those years out of her bag and flashing it at them. When they just stood around staring in silent amazement she rolled her eyes and pointed at the house. "You probably really oughta be getting your bosses now, don't you think?"

After they ran off, the leader stammering back as he went "Wait here! O-or not here, if that's not what you want. Wait wherever you want! You probably know this place better than me!" she guided Iroh to the house. It was different than it had been the last time she was there, some things missing, others added, furniture rearranged here and there. When her parents finally came out to see if what the guards were telling them was really true they found her asking Iroh to describe a vase that was bugging her by behind in a spot where there had been no vase before; this was supposed to be her house that she had memorized better than anywhere else in the world so was was up with that vase being there?

When she felt them come in she froze for a moment, then turned to awkwardly start greeting them. She wasn't exactly sure what the right way to say 'Hi' to your parents was when you were seeing them for the first time in years after running away from home, but before she could really try to work it out they were both hugging her tightly enough that it choked. She'd always thought that whenever she finally gave in and went back to see her parents again she'd be able to keep herself cool and aloof, at least until she'd finally gotten it through their heads that she wasn't going to break if someone sneezed at her too hard, but with their arms wrapped around her she suddenly found herself crying her eyes out and squeezing them back with an even tighter embrace. It was the exhaustion. It had to be.

When they finally broke away, Lao and Poppy turned to Iroh and both bowed low to him. "Thank you so much for bringing our little girl back to us," Poppy told him.

"Any reward you could ask for is yours," Lao added.

"Please, stand," Iroh told them both. "I'm afraid that there's been a misunderstanding."

"Yeah," Toph added, "I'm the one who brought _him_ here. We're kind of in trouble, and need somewhere to sleep... for a long time."

They turned back and finally really _looked_ at Toph and an instant later Poppy's hand fluttered to her mouth to vainly try to hide a gasp that Toph's ears would have picked up even if her feet hadn't been strong enough to feel her mouth drop open. "Toph! You look as if you're half-way to the land of the dead!"

"Gee, thanks." It wasn't like she couldn't have guessed what she looked like, but her mother didn't need to say it like _that_. Of course, her parents wouldn't be at their best themselves after being dragged out of bed to greet her in the middle of the night, so just for then she'd be nice and give them a pass if they said anything like that.

"I'll call for food, it you think you can wait a short while before sleeping," Lao told them graciously. "That will give us time to have our finest guestroom prepared for your travelling companion, and, of course, to make sure that the servants have been diligent about dusting and airing out your room, Toph."

Good food instead of dried produce and chunks of unseasoned meat was just about the only thing that _could,_ have made them want to hold off sleep any longer. Toph suspected that the only thing that had kept them from feeling unbearably hungry for at least the last two days was that by the time they reached that state they were already unbearably tired instead, and it drowned out the hunger. "Food sounds _great_ ," he told him, "Oh, and do you think you could have the servants prepare whatever the best tea you have in the house is?"

"Of course," Lao said. "Anything for our daughter."

Someone, whether it was her parents or the chefs, was smart enough to start with food that didn't need to be cooked and could be brought straight out to them. Or maybe the chefs just didn't want to fire up the ovens for the day quite yet. Either way Toph was only able to control herself long enough to tell her parents, remembering how they were about wanting her to be neat and dainty at all times, "Just so you know, I _do_ still remember how to use good table manners, but try to forgive me if I ignore everybody and eat like a pig. I've barely had enough in the last week to make one decent meal." That said she tucked in, hoping that it would be enough to hold off an argument about propriety.

They tried to fill her in on news about what had happened in Gaoling over the last five years while she ate, apparently forgetting that while she'd still lived there they'd done their absolute best to make sure that she didn't know anything about what happened outside of the estate. Because of that things like who the neighboring children had married, whose fortunes had risen or fallen, or which of Poppy's friends had had new children didn't mean much of anything to her.

When they finished, much faster than was probably healthy for the amount of food they'd shoveled in, a servant lead Iroh to his room while Lao and Poppy escorted Toph to hers. They both assured her that they hadn't changed anything at all, though Poppy added, "Of course, that will need to change now. Oh, Toph, you've grown so much! At the very least we'll need to get rid of all your old dresses and have new ones made."

Toph stepped into her room and didn't let her expression flicker at all at what she found there, although after moving perfectly normally though the rest of the house she made a subtle show then of holding out her arm while she walked forward until it found the bed. She ran her hand along it all the way to the head, remarking for their benefit, "I can feel that it still has all the old bedding and everything. Thank you, I know I'll be more comfortable having it be just the way it always was." She turned back to where they were both still hovering at the door and forced a smile. "I'm really sorry to ask you to waste the whole first day that we'll have together again, as a _family_ , but could you make sure nobody tries waking me up until tomorrow morning? It's been so long since I've had any sleep that I don't think I'll wake up today at all, and things have been so stressful that if I hear somebody opening the door when I finally feel like I should be safe I'll probably scream my head off."

"Of course we will," Lao promised. "We're so glad to have you back, having to wait an extra day to really speak with you will be a small price to pay to make sure you can be happy with us now."

"But, Toph..." Poppy hesitantly added, "There is one thing we'd like to know before then. Since we had no time for introductions, who is that man? What is he to you?"

"It's too complicated to talk about now. I promise I'll tell you I'm done sleeping, but for now can you just just accept that all you need to know is that he's with me?"

"We... suppose," Lao said, not sounding at all happy about it, but when she climbed into bed without taking off her clothes, or even trying to brush off some of the dirt coating her body to make sure they wouldn't lecture her about what it would do to the bedclothes, he seemed to realize that she really _was_ too tired to keep talking. "For now it can be enough that somehow his connection with you was enough to bring you home to us at last. Goodnight, my daughter." They closed the door, and a second later she heard a faint click.

Once she was alone she climbed right back out of bed and sighed, her shoulders drooping. She walked over to her window and reached out to touch it, then shook her head sadly when she found metal under her fingers.

She dug through her closet until her fingers felt the distinctive embroidery on the collar of a nightgown she remembered which had been designed to hang on her so loosely at twelve that it still basically fit her even after puberty had worked its spells. Finding and changing into it gave her parents enough time to walk away from her room, and once she was done she twisted her door opened and slipped out to find Iroh.

It was easy enough to work out where he'd be; unless things had changed even more than she'd already noticed there was only one room that they could describe as their 'finest' guestroom. Luckily he was still awake when she reached him, even though it would have been easy for him not to be if felt at all like she did. She walked into his room without even thinking of knocking; after everything that had happened since the day she'd pulled him out of the mountain it just felt like privacy no longer existed between them, or maybe like they'd reached a point where privacy could include each other. "Can I stay here with you?" she asked softly as she closed the door behind her. "Not just tonight, but for however long we stay here?" And there was that damnable tremor in her voice again, though she'd thought that she'd left it behind with the abandoned village, the one that she didn't want him to be able to hear.

But wanting didn't mean much, because when he asked, "What's wrong?" his voice was worried enough that she was sure he had anyway.

She pressed herself back against the wall, the feel of cold stone against her back making her feel more secure, and bowed her head as she answered. "...There are bars on the windows in my room. A new metal door that locks on the outside, like it belongs on a jail cell. And they got somebody to cover the walls and floor and ceiling with wood planks, to try and keep me from just bending a hole in the stone. I guess they still don't understand that I'm not as blind as they always believed, if they thought that I just wouldn't _notice_..." Her voice caught, and for the second time that day she was pulled into a tight hug. She didn't start crying again, but her whole body shook as she added, "Lucky thing they never heard about me metalbending, huh? Like that door could ever stop me."

"You are safe here, Toph. If you feel sorrow you don't need to feign strength in front of me." He gave her one more squeeze then released her except for a arm around her shoulder that he used to guide her toward the bed. "Of course you can stay."

Although the bed was more than big enough for both of them to have plenty of room, once they were both in it she curled right up against him, the only person in the whole building that she felt like she could trust.


	12. Chapter 12

She sneaked back to her room before anyone else woke up the morning of their second day there, sure that her wishes had been followed and nobody had tried bothering her the day before because there'd never been a racket in the hall outside when somebody found out she was missing. She was also sure that it wouldn't be too much longer before someone came to get her, because her parents would want to try and keep her from discovering their locks for as long as they thought possible. She wished that she could confront them about it, in any other situation she would have done so immediately instead of holding her silence, but as long as she and Iroh were resting there she couldn't get into a major fight with them.

She tried telling herself that it didn't matter. She'd be leaving as soon as it was safe, and if they were still underestimating her abilities than it would be easier to slip away. She'd been _planning_ on trying to leave them on better terms than the last time, but if they wanted to try keeping her prisoner it their home to stop her from leaving again than they didn't deserve a good-bye.

But telling herself that didn't do a thing to dislodge the heavy feeling that had settled in the pit of her stomach from the moment she'd heard that lock click.

At breakfast that morning, in-between bites, she absently asked them, "Could you have a message sent to the Fire Lord for me?"

She could practically feel the side-glances they exchanged, though even her vision wasn't actually good enough to sense something as slight as the movement of an eye, then Poppy said, "Oh, yes. He was one of your little... _Avatar_ group friends, wasn't he?" She tried to hide the anger that Aang's title still brought to her voice, but wasn't very successful at it.

"Yeah, but the more important thing right now is that Iroh's his uncle." She raised her spoon to her mouth and resisted the urge to smirk wickedly around it when she heard her father choke on a bite of his breakfast. If they insisted on still seeing her as a their little porcelain doll she'd give it to them for the sake of having some peace, but that didn't mean she wouldn't experiment with just how much she could poke at them from behind the facade in a way that she never had back when she still had to deal with them everyday. "I _did_ promise that I'd introduce you after we had a chance to sleep," she said innocently. "Iroh, these are my parents, Lao and Poppy Bei Fong. Mother, Father, this is Iroh."

"It is a pleasure to meet you," Iroh told them, his voice a study in politeness although she could head the undercurrent of amusement beneath the words.

Lao quickly pulled himself together again, "The pleasure is all ours, of course."

"Oh, my, Toph, you've made friends in so many surprising places," Poppy added.

"Really? I'm surprised that you're surprised," Toph said, keeping her voice fixed in the tone of demure politeness that had been her at-home mask for so many years, though she had a lot more trouble keeping the words themselves fitting within that mask. "You must not have been getting very good gossip about the kinds for friends I've made, have you?"

Neither of them seemed to know how to respond to that, so instead Poppy swiftly changed the subject. "Toph, I've made plans for use to go out in the city today to buy you new clothing, if you've gotten enough rest now," she said, and won back a tiny bit of Toph's favor with just those words; she _never_ would have taken her shopping in the city in the past instead of calling seamstresses into the estate, let alone acted like it was so natural for to do so. "We'll find one or two ready-made outfits just to get you out of those filthy rags while the tailor does his work, and then take you to a hairdresser for a nice trim. ...No, the hairdresser first, so we can be sure the outfits we pick will fit its final style. I wish that you hadn't cut off all of your beautiful hair, Toph, I really don't know how much the hairdresser will be able to do with what's left." Toph was just getting used to the flow of motherly fussing when Poppy suddenly threw her for a loop and made her choke on her tea by off-handedly wondering outloud, "What type of husband do you expect to find when you've sliced off all of your hair and let yourself tan as darkly as a fieldworker?"

Toph was vaguely aware that Iroh was coughing too, but it was hard to pay much attention to it when she was sputtering and gasping herself from the liquid in her airpipe. " _Husband?_ " she managed to spit out. "Since when are you worried about things like that? The last time I was here you were trying to keep me hidden on the grounds for my whole life."

"Toph, your mother and I have talked a great deal in the years since you left," Lao took over the conversation, sounding like he thought he was announcing a wonderfully thrilling surprise, the world's greatest present. "We understand now that you wish to have a life outside of our home. After a great deal of discussion we decided that we _will_ allow you to marry if we can find someone who will care for you as much as we do."

"We know that there are many men who would ignore the fact that you taken so little care of your looks because they want to take advantage of our family and of the powerful friends that you've made, but you have no need to fear," Poppy added. "Even after all that's happened, you are still our most precious treasure, Toph. We would _never_ give your hand to someone who was just trying to raise his social standing. Even if we haven't had as much time as we wished to watch you grow up, we know that you've become a wonderful young woman, and we'll surely find someone who will love you in spite of that hair or those... those _muscles_."

Toph was torn between part of her thinking okay, in their own strange and still totally missing what she actually wanted way that was a nice sentiment, but what made them think _she'd_ want anyone who thought her hair was a problem, and what were they going on about with that tan talk before? and the rest of her still being stuck just thinking _What?????_

Before she could decide on how in the world she should answer that, Iroh proved that he deserved all the affection she held for him and more when he calmly cut in with, "Forgive me for intruding on a family matter, but I believe that if you look more closely you'll find that Toph has grown into a lovely young woman even if she's been too busy to follow upper class fashions. And since she's only just come home, perhaps she might like to wait before talking about leaving again."

For a moment they both stayed quiet, a brittle strained silence instead of a comfortable lull in the conversation, then Lao said, "Of course, it's too soon still to even bring it up."

"For now we just want to enjoy having her back again," Poppy murmured.


	13. Interlude Three

"We found Aang!" Sokka shouted as he burst into the library.

Zuko had been asleep for the first time in a day and a half, leaning against Mai's shoulder while on his other side he was half-buried under a pile of books, but at the noise he sat bolt-upright, his eyes flying open wide. "What? Huh? Did something happen?"

"We found Aang!" Sokka repeated, his tone only the tiniest bit lower. "Or... I guess it's more like he found us. He actually stopped in Ba Sing Se on his own after he left the Northern Air Temple, and the Earth King told him what's going on. But he sent a message and he's waiting to hear what we want him to do!"

Zuko stumbled to his feet, shedding books as he stood, and held out his hand. "Let me see the message," he said.

"Uh, okay," Sokka said, pulling it out of his pocket and passing it over, "but it doesn't really say anything but what I already told you."

Zuko skimmed the message, finding that Sokka wasn't entirely telling the truth--there was plenty of other information, but it was just Aang taking the chance to do things like fill them in on what Teo was up to or describe a weird-looking tree he'd seen while he was writing a letter anyway, but then he got to the part when Aang talked about the Earth King letting him know what had happened and he froze, his eyes going wide again.

For the first time since he'd holed himself up in the library something like a plan started to form in his mind. A plan that might actually _work_ , that was; dozens of others had passed through his thoughts only to be cast aside again when he realized that they'd take too long, or because they'd require the help of the military when he'd been reminded a dozen times that he needed to leave them out of it, or any number of other reasons. At his most tired he'd become nonsensical enough that it had taken Mai reminding him that, though turtle ducks _would_ make unnoticeable spies that nobody would complain about if they flew over the Earth Kingdom looking for any sign of Iroh, he couldn't actually communicate with them to make him notice the flaw in that one. It wouldn't go down as one of his finest moments, and had been what finally convinced him to at least take a nap.

"What is it?" Mai asked when he'd been silent for longer than just reading the note should have taken, touching his arm.

"He says that the Earth King was enraged about what happened," Zuko read to her.

"Well, _yeah_ ," Sokka said. "I didn't think that was worth mentioning; I mean, Iroh is one of his citizens, and he wouldn't have written to let you know something had happened to begin with if he didn't care what happened to him. It's kind of hard to think of that guy being enraged though, he's too goofy."

"'Iroh is one of his citizens'," Zuko repeated, staring off into space, "and it enraged him that he was kidnapped..." Suddenly he whirled around to face Mai, letting the message fall to the ground, already forgotten. "Mai! Find someone to get a ship ready. I need to go write a few letters, but after that hopefully we'll be able to set sail as soon as it's ready."

"No international incidents," she reminded him.

"Don't worry, I've got an idea. I think I've been looking at this the wrong way all along." He waste the time it would take to walk to his own study, instead just grabbing a handful of the paper he'd been using to take notes as he read and sitting at one of the tables in the library. "Just watch, both of you. I'm going to solve this in a way that will make Uncle proud."


	14. Chapter 14

They decided to take one more day to rest around the house before they rejoined the world, so the shopping trip was put off until the next day. Iroh walked to the gate with them, but once they were there Poppy made a few pointed comments about how shopping for clothing was really a mother-daughter activity.

"I'm only going to visit the local teahouses and see if they have any blends I've yet to try," he said mildly, and Poppy looked embarrassed at her mistake.

"Let him take a few of the guards, Mom," Toph said, a statement instead of a question. "We don't need this many, right?" She didn't think that they'd be in any danger in the middle of the city in broad daylight, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Anyway, she didn't want to deal with a whole horde of guards hovering around them all day.

"Oh, yes, of course," Poppy said, still flustered but recognizing that it probably wouldn't be wise to be the person who sent the Fire Lord's uncle off without any protection if anything happened.

"See you later!" Toph called after him with a wave as their paths split up.

It didn't take long for Toph to discover that going shopping with her mother was even more tedious than standing around in the estate while her mother ordered a tailor around. She didn't let Toph make any decisions for herself, just held things up to her until she found something that she liked. At least she'd meant it when she'd said they'd just get Toph's hair trimmed; the hairdresser trip first thing was their one fairly simple stop as the woman there just evened up the ends.

Toph could admit that she couldn't be trusted to put together an outfit with colors that matched nicely on her own for obvious reasons, but she did know which fabrics she liked the feel of and which cuts fit her comfortably and she couldn't even put in her own opinions about that. Poppy even tried to throw away the outfit that Toph had been wearing since the day she'd left the desert as soon as she'd stuck her in a dress, but Toph quickly stopped her by telling her that she knew they needed to be washed four times in a row before they'd be clean again, but they were a gift and it would be rude to just throw them away. She'd been through a lot in those clothes, she didn't want to just toss them in the trash.

Poppy had stopped briefly to chat with a stall-owner when Toph suddenly heard yapping behind her, and a moment latter there were long burrowing claws digging into her leg as a little tongue lapped frantically at her fingertips. With growing worry she recognized the shape of one of the gopherdogs she'd left behind at the lake. A moment later she heard an equally recognizable voice calling through the crowd, "Xiao Tao Qi! Get back her you little--" The words turned into a strangled noise as he got close enough to see Toph. It was one of the dog's owners, the young scout that she'd left in the tree. "You!" he yelled.

"Mu!" she yelled back, then realized that she probably should have kept her voice down even as her mother turned around to face them.

"Do you know this young man, Toph?" she asked, a note of disapproval in her voice.

Toph faked a wide smile and chirped, "He's a friend of mine, Mom, another earthbender I know from the war. Could I please go with him for a few minutes? Since he's in town I'd really like to treat him to one of Gaoling's specialty cakes." She couldn't really remember if the town even _had_ a specialty, but she figured that every big city had some regional dessert that it was proud of so it wasn't too far of a stretch to assume their's would too.

Sure enough Poppy wasn't suspicious of that, though she still didn't seem happy at the thought of them going off together. "Well..."

"And of course I'll bring along a couple of the guards," Toph added, the final touch.

"Well, I suppose with the guards there it will be fine. Just promise that you'll be back in fifteen minutes."

"Earthbender's honor," she said, covering her heart with her hand before she whirled on her heel to face him. Now that her mother couldn't see her expression she shot him a death-glare and beckoned for him to head down the street. "Don't you dare make a fuss because there's nobody in town who'd take your side over mine if you did something stupid," she warned him under her breath as she walked at his side, and he made another choked noise as he went along. They only went as far as the first alley they reached before she shoved him down it and slammed up a pillar of stone to press his neck back against the wall.

Once he was safely pinned she turned back to the guards and smiled at them brightly. "Please keep this a secret," she told them. "We wouldn't want to worry my parents."

One of them, clearly the most clever of the bunch, bowed to her slightly and said, "Of course, Avatar's teacher."

When she turned back to Mu he was whimpering and begging, "Please don't kill me, please don't kill me, _please_ don't kill me."

"Okay then, talk," she said, nudging the pillar a little higher so he was forced to stand on his toes to keep it from digging into the soft spot beneath his chin and hopefully would stay frightened enough that he wouldn't start thinking that if she hadn't seriously hurt anyone yet she probably wasn't going to start. "How many people are in your group, how many are in the city, and how close are the rest?"

"There's almost thirty of us!" he babbled out, "twenty earthbenders, and half of those old member of the Dai Li. Only six of us are here, everybody else is a day away from the city, and we're just trying to find out where you're hiding now, not hurt you. We'll go back to the rest of the guys when we find out and they'll come up with the plan. They just picked me to come because they thought I'd want revenge after the tree thing, but I don't, I really really don't, I just want to get away from all this and live my life without crazy women leaving me to die in trees so please just let me go!"

She let the pillar drop, but before he could run away she gestured to one of the guards. "Take him to the local jail. And take good care of his pet!"

Even though she was sending him off to a cell all he said as he was lead away was, "Oh, thank you. Thank you!"

There was plenty of time left before she needed to get back to Poppy so she ran off to find Iroh. It was easy enough to find him, she just had to ask the remaining guards what they thought was the best teahouse in the city and she managed to catch him just as he was leaving it. "Come with me," she said, looping her arm around his so she could pull him off course to walk with her back towards the clothing district. She kept her arm where it was, walking pressed as close to his side as she could get so she could speak as quietly as possible while she filled him in on what she had learned. "We need to get out of Gaoling, the sooner the better," she said once she was done. "I don't know if they'll risk attacking in a city again now that we're on the alert for them, but if they will I can't get my parents involved."

"Of course you can't," he agreed. "I feel ready to leave tonight if you are."

"I think that's the smartest idea. Even if Mu hadn't found out where we're staying one of the others might have."

They reached Poppy then, and moved to separate. "I ran into Iroh on the way back from getting the cake and he offered to keep me company until I reached you," she said as an excuse for why they were together again.

Once he was gone on his way to the next teahouse Poppy uneasily asked, "Toph, exactly what is your relationship with this Iroh? You wouldn't be walking so closely with just any man, and you both seemed so uneasy with our discussion yesterday morning... And do you realize exactly _how_ old he is, being unable to see him?"

"Huh?" Toph asked, completely confused.

Hesitantly Poppy continued on, "He _does_ obviously care for you, and despite his age a member of royalty would be a more than acceptable choice, so if there's something that you'd let to tell me...?"

Finally Toph got it, and she grinned at the thought; maybe this would be the perfect way to get them to drop the subject. Or at least keep their attention focused on one person who she actually liked so they wouldn't try throwing a stream of strange men after her. She smiled at Poppy and said with perfect honestly, "Mom, out of every man I know, Iroh is the one that I'd marry if I had a choice." She didn't add that every other person who was anywhere near to being an acceptable choice was either married already, dating someone, or not even all that close of friends with her.

But... maybe he even outranked all of them. Possibly.

Likely.

Poppy seemed even more flustered that her guess was apparently right, but she only showed it in bodily clues that she probably didn't think Toph could pick up. Her voice was much more steady than it had been. "I'll speak with your father, and we'll think on it."


	15. Chapter 15

That night she crept into his room again once her parents had gone to bed, and they both slept until the moon had gone down, wanting as much rest as possible before they needed to run again. The darkness was a great ally of theirs anyway; Toph didn't need light to see and as long as Iroh stayed close to her until they were out of the city and she could bring up her wave again he would be fine moving through it too, but their enemies would be weakened by it.

Much to her own annoyance, Toph found herself stuck in a dress. Her sandbender clothing was still in the wash, her mother hadn't bought her any pants that day which was unsurprising when she was on a one-woman crusade to make Toph ladylike again, and the few pairs left behind from when she was twelve had all become much too tight to wear over the years. Not that that had stopped her from spending a good fifteen minutes trying to find a loose enough pair. With no other options she just wore the cheapest dress that they'd bought even though it wasn't the most comfortable, so Poppy wouldn't try sending someone to yell at her if she learned what she'd done. Then ripped off the hem to above her ankles so it wouldn't trip her up, tore open the skirt to the thighs on either side and up to the knees at the front and back to give herself room to move, and tried to make the best of it.

They slipped silently out of town, Toph figuring that the next day her family would make more than enough noise for the both of them to let any enemies who'd been closing in that they were gone. Though she hoped, of course, that they hadn't actually found out where she'd been staying yet and she wasn't leaving her parents in danger if they decided to attack that night; their guards really weren't trained to handle Dai Li. Their silence held until they'd left the last building behind them, but as soon as they were out of the city Iroh said, "Do you know, I had a very surprising conversation with your parents tonight."

"I doubt whatever it was was _that_ surprising," she said, trying to work out which way she wanted to go. Omashu would probably be the smartest choice, King Bumi giving them the final edge they needed over their enemies and providing him with a safe place to rest while he decided whether he wanted to stay in the Earth Kingdom or return to the Fire Nation. But it would be a pretty far trip, and there were closer choices; Chin village was still a pretty creepy place but they'd lightened up enough since the visit Aang had told her about that someone might give them a ride at least as far as Kyoshi Island, or if they went to Foggy Swamp the benders there were friendly enough that they might give them a lift all the way to Zuko's front door. It would suck, but the open sea was the safest place they could be unless Appa or an airship suddenly appeared to get them into the sky. "They aren't interesting enough to be surprising."

"Oh no, this certainly was. You see, after you had gone to bed they asked me if I would like your hand in marriage."

She stopped dead in her tracks so suddenly that he walked straight into her. "They what?" she asked, unable to believe that they'd actually done it, especially so soon. She had thought they'd be discussing it with each other for _ages_ before they finally decided whether or not they'd really be comfortable with her marrying someone even older than they were, and that even if they decided that they were they'd still give convincing her to look for someone else a shot before they ever brought it up with him. And since she'd know that they'd be leaving that night it had seemed impossible that Iroh would ever even find out about that conversation. But now that he knew the option was there she couldn't resist the urge to add, "So... what did you say?"

"I told them that I was very flattered by the offer, but it was so sudden that I needed time to think on it. And then I was even more surprised when your mother told me that she had had a talk with you that day that made her assume that we've already discussed it amongst ourselves." He touched her shoulder gently, and the night suddenly seemed very quiet around them. "Do you happen to know what she was talking about?"

"Hey, I never said I'd talked about it with you!" she was quick to deny, then had to give him the truth by adding, "Though maybe I did say something about being willing to marry you, if I was going to get married. More than anybody else I know. But I thought it would just make them shut up about it!"

"Ah, cruel girl, getting an old man's hopes up like that," he joked, but she thought that maybe, just _maybe_ , she heard something a little serious behind the laugh.

Maybe something a little disappointed.

And it was hearing that which made her add, "Well, it's not like it was a total lie. Or a lie at all, really. I mean, I would do it if you wanted to. Who else is awesome enough for me?"

The awkward moment was broken before it could get any worse by someone in the trees high above them saying, "Well there you two are!"

Toph automatically started to fall into a ready position at the sound, and just as automatically relaxed again when she realized that she recognized the voice. A moment later Suki and a few of her warriors jump down around them, and Toph was pulled into a tight sisterly embrace.

"I'm so glad that we've finally found you! Once we convinced the Hami to let us know where they'd last seen you I _knew_ you'd end up somewhere down here if you didn't head up to Ba Sing Se, but I wasn't sure if you'd let yourself get near your home town or not. Some of the girls thought that you wouldn't set foot within five miles of Gaoling, but I had a hunch, and now here you are!" She stepped back, holding Toph at arm's length, then laughed and added, "And look at how nice you look. Do you even still need help?"

" _Yes!_ " Toph told her emphatically. "The people chasing us are going to find out that we left Gaoling as soon as it's morning, and then they'll come after us again."

"Great!" Suki said, much more cheerfully than the news warranted, "Because do you know what a hawk happened to bring me just yesterday? _A plan._ "


	16. Chapter 16

Suki lead them to a large clearing and had them settle down with a fire like they were just stopping to fix a meal. After that she told them that all they needed to do was wait, and hid herself in the woods.

"There are a lot of people not that far away," Toph told Iroh, the only part of this 'plan' that she was able to pick up on, though it was enough to make her feel less worried. Numbers were good, they were comforting, but she wished that Suki had actually let them in on whatever it was they meant to do; when asked she'd just told them that the person who'd put it all together wanted it to be a surprise.

They waited and waited until a few hours after dawn when she felt another group coming towards them and knew that it could only be the group which had chased them for so long. Even with the promise of a plan and the fact that they were both finally rested enough that they, or at least she, could actually put up a fight if it came down to it that old familiar fear welled up again as a now automatic reaction to their presence. At the feel of their speed, obviously thinking that the chase was still on, it only grew.

With the possibility of death pushing closer by the moment she suddenly found herself saying, "It's not just that I would. I'd _want to,_ I really would. If you wanted to, I'd want to, and I can't say that about anyone else. So I want to make sure we actually talk about that once we're somewhere safe and have the time to do it, and don't just pretend to forget about it once everything's over with to try and keep things from getting stupid and awkward."

He was quiet for long enough that she thought he wasn't going to reply, but at almost the last moment he reached out to gently touch her cheek. "I would not find it a terrible arrangement either."

And then the hunters were on them, so quickly that they almost mowed them down before noticing they were there and coming to a halt. Behind them Toph felt Suki slip away from the tree she'd been hiding behind without a sound. Their enemies on the other hand weren't nearly as silent, the whole hoard of them buzzing with conversation at finding the person they'd been chasing for so long just sitting there.

"Isn't it obvious, my friends?" one voice rose over the group. It was an ageless sounding voice, once that wouldn't seem out of place on a man at any age from the end of his teenaged years to the beginning of old-age, and it was thick with an oily-charisma that reminded her unsettlingly of Azula while she was still sane enough to be manipulative. "The coward has finally realized that he'll never be able to run far enough to escape us and has finally forced himself to stand and fight like a man."

"'Fight like a man'?" Toph repeated with a snort, "I don't know many _men_ whose favorite way of attacking is to sneak up on people in their sleep, but so far it doesn't seem like you creeps ever do anything else. I bet you barely know what to do with us since you haven't caught us napping!"

"Ah, you must be the young earthbender I've heard of," the man said, walking towards them and separating himself from the crowd in the process so she knew which one he was and could get an sense of what he looked like. He was tall and whip-thin, and the way he held himself made her think of a mantis, especially when he bent at the waist to look down on her. "Tell me, Little Sister," he went on, the endearment making her skin crawl, "why are you choosing to guard the filth who's done so much harm to your kingdom against your own people?"

"The only filth I can feel around here is standing right in front of me," she shot back. She could feel the group behind her already on the move, she'd only need to keep the man talking for a little while longer before whatever was going to happen happened. A task made much easier by the fact that he seemed to be the type of person who'd go on yammering all on his own.

"I wonder... are you so young that you don't even know about his crimes? Do you just know him as the nice-acting old man who serves you tea in Ba Sing Se?" he started to come closer, but stopped when she edged back in response. "Do you even know that he'd a firebender?"

"Yeah, that's not a surprise. You'll have to try a _lot_ harder than that if you're trying to surprise me."

"And do you know what they've _done_ to us? How many of our people have died because of them? How many were imprisoned for no reason? Do you know what _he_ did? He must be punished!"

"The only one who needs to be punished here is you," a very familiar said from just behind Iroh, and Toph smiled a little when she felt the ends of the robes which went with Zuko's full Fire Lord regalia brushing over the ground. If he was going to put himself in danger and risk making everything Iroh did for him be for nothing than at least he did so with style.

The sleazy creep seemed just as happy to see him, laughing out loud then whirling around to face his men and wave a hand back towards Zuko, "Do you _see_ the gall of the Fire Nation? Their own Lord comes to attack innocent citizens of the Earth Kingdom on their own land!"

"Not quite!" a cackling old man's voice jumped in, King Bumi now stepping up to stand at Zuko's side. "Fire Lord Zuko agreed to sail over and assist the Earth Kingdom in bringing down a nasty group of traitors who are trying to get their own country caught up in another war! Oh, and the Earth King asked us to rescue a kidnapped citizen of his city while we're at it."

Zuko sounded a little embarrassed when he lowered his voice so the enemy wouldn't be able to hear him and said, "I know that you wouldn't have wanted me to just burst into the Earth Kingdom after you, Uncle, so I spent days looking for a way to get over here without making everything blow up in our face before I realized I could just, uh, ask for official permission to bring troops it. It wasn't hard to get; the leaders over here aren't happy with these terrorists either."

"But King Bumi!" the leader of the kidnappers exclaimed, reaching out toward him, "We're only trying to save our kingdom from the evils of the Fire Nation!"

But he was suddenly struck backwards by a hunk of rock slamming into his chest. Toph smiled at the attack; it was always nice to be around for Bumi's work. "You're trying to destroy our kingdom!"

While all attention had been on Zuko and Bumi the rest of the group had crept up to surround the clearing, well more of them than of the thirty kidnappers, and the attack on the leader seemed to be a sign. All at once the air was filled with stone and flame, the combined forces of the Fire Nation and Omashu so great that it was less of a fight and more of a slaughter.

It was strange, sitting by as the group she had feared so much was so neatly torn apart. Through the weeks of stress and exhaustion she'd built them up into something vast and unbeatable in her mind, the type of monsters that her parents had filled her mind with a lifetime before when she was still small enough to believe them when they told her she was helpless, but at the hands of her friends and allies they crumbled like they'd never been a real danger to begin with. And maybe they wouldn't have been, if it hadn't been so important that she didn't fight. Maybe the only real threat had been the one Iroh had focused on from the beginning; what they could have done to the peace between the lands if they'd been given more ammo to use for riling the people.

But that wouldn't be an issue anymore. And for the first time since the moment she'd heard Hawky II's shriek sounding over the desert Toph finally really started to relax again.


	17. Epilogue

Even though they'd stopped running in the end they wound up in Omashu anyway, King Bumi throwing them a massive feast in honor of their escape. Zuko almost immediately started hogging Iroh, even dragging him off with him when he and Bumi needed to deal with the messy business of what to do with the imprisoned rebels, but Toph didn't mind. If she'd been the one in Zuko's place, forced to sit around with no real clue what was happening and just trying to have faith that they'd find a way to make things work out well, she'd have latched onto Iroh's side the second she saw him again herself.

For the first hour or so Toph enjoyed the reunion with all of her friends. She'd seen them all pretty regularly over the years after they'd all gone their separate ways, but usually just one or two at a time; it had been ages since they were all together like they'd been in the old days. But it didn't take long before she started feeling a little overwhelmed with it all.

It wasn't like she'd never been part of the center of attention at a party before. In the early days after the war it had seemed like she and her friends were expected to show up at every celebration between the North Pole and the South whether they felt up to it or not. Aang had been the one everyone paid the most attention to, along with Zuko when he was able to be there with them, but none of them had really been able to stay out of the spotlight.

But that had been years ago, and since then she'd gotten used to the life of a traveler, passing through most places without ever really being noticed and for the most part blending into the crowd whenever she did stop somewhere for awhile. When people did pay close attention to her it usually meant that they needed to be taught a quick lesson about how, no, she _wasn't_ just a poor little blind girl and she _didn't_ need help finding a caretaker, and if it wasn't that then it probably meant somebody was going to try to rob her the minute she left town.

Even back during her days as the Blind Bandit when she'd relished the eyes of the crowd on her she'd remained detached from them. They'd cheered for her, laughed at her taunts, booed her opponents more often than not, but then once her matches were over she vanished back to her parent's home without ever coming closer to them than the distance between the ring and the stands. Xin Fu had been the only one that she'd talked to much at all, and that had mostly just been about arranging her schedule and accepting her payments.

Having _everybody_ try to corner her to congratulate or talk to her, having to answer the same questions over and over again because apparently nobody was willing to let the answers get passed down from the other two dozen people who'd already asked the same thing when they could bug her about it, got outright tiring and more than a little annoying before too long. She made herself grit her teeth and bear it long enough to be polite--not something she'd usually bother to do, but a lot of the people there had helped save her _life_ so the least she could do was sit around being nice for a few hours--but then she slipped away as soon as she could.

For awhile she just wandered aimlessly, enjoying the feeling of being able to do so again without having to be constantly on guard. She still caught herself starting to tense up whenever she felt someone rushing towards her, whether it was a servant on their way to some task or someone else who'd left the party and wanted to catch her alone for a minute when they saw she was there too, but the rush of relief that came a second later when her mind reminded her instincts that they had nothing to worry about more than made up for it.

Eventually she made her way to Flopsie's exercise yard, where she knew Aang had let Appa bed down for the night. Nowhere in the city could be quieter, a giant sky bison enough to make even people who were used to Flopsie avoid the area no matter how friendly he was.

"Hi Appa," she said, reaching up to rub his snout when he leaned down to snuff at her. "Have you missed me?" He snorted a damp gust of air over her head and she laughed and patted his nose. "Yeah, it's good to see you too."

Greetings complete she flopped against his leg, sinking into the soft shag of his fur. She knew that she'd start to smell like sky bison if she stayed there long, but she didn't mind. Though she'd never choose flying over walking on her own feet unless she needed to get somewhere _really_ fast his smell had become a comforting one over time, even if it _was_ strong.

She half-dozed off there, Appa's warmth and the packed dirt below her making for a better bed than the large feather mattress in the guest room she'd been given to her taste. Maybe she'd just go ahead and move out there for however long she ended up staying in Omashu; if Aang moved on before she did she figured that Flopsie would make an acceptable substitute for Appa, and she doubted that Bumi would care if she ignored his hospitality in favor of the ground. He was another top-notch earthbender, he had to get the appeal of having their element at his back even if staying connected to it wasn't as important for him as it was to her.

She wasn't sure how much later it was when Iroh found her there, her cat-napping state making the flow of time feel fuzzy and undefined, but she thought it had gotten pretty late. She opened her eyes so he wouldn't worry about disturbing her, and smiled towards him when he came close. "Is Zuko tired of you already? I didn't think he'd let you get more than five feet away from him until at _least_ the day after tomorrow."

"He may not have," Iroh said, his voice warm and fond the way it always was when he talked about his nephew, "however Mai convinced him that he couldn't have the servants move my bed into their room with them."

"Or else he'd be sleeping on the floor in the hall?" Toph guessed, and knew by the sound of his laugh that she'd gotten it right. "Well, Appa and I are glad to have you, aren't we Appa? So go ahead and grab a toe." For a minute her sight was full of almost nothing besides Appa's bulk, as he shifted to examine the new arrival and the vibrations caused by the huge mass of him drowned out almost everything else, then when he settled down again Iroh was already taking a seat next to her. She'd assumed that he'd sit right beside her, as close as they'd gotten used to being over the last several weeks, but instead he made her frown by keeping a good amount of space between them. "I hope you didn't have to spend a long time looking for me. I wasn't trying to hide from anybody I actually _know._ "

"Not long at all. A few of the servants saw where you went and let everyone know where you had gone, they have only stayed away out of respect for your privacy."

She snorted and flopped her head back against her furry backrest, letting it loll to the side to face him. "I think being in the pen with the huge scary animals probably had more to do with it."

"Perhaps," he allowed. She felt him shift, and when she tapped her foot absently against the ground to get a better look she found that he was looking up towards the sky. When he spoke again he sounded as if he were picking his words with care, although if anyone had been listening in would have wondered at it when the actual topic would have seemed like nothing more that small talk to them. "It seems as if suddenly my tea is wanted throughout the world," he told her. "My nephew did his best to convince me to return to the Fire Nation with him, of course, and the Earth King also sent word that I am free to return home to the Jasmine Dragon, but King Bumi has also offered me space to make a new teahouse here in Omashu and your friends have stopped me to let me know that Kyoshi Island is badly in need of a place where its warriors could purchase a good cup of tea, and that the South Pole is always in need of more hot drinks. It made me wonder where you would like to settle, if you were ever to stop traveling."

In the hours since they'd last been alone together Toph had done her best to avoid thinking about the conversation they had to have. It wasn't because she'd started second-guessing herself about her confession, or because she was worried about how their talk would go, but because she didn't want to start getting nervous and that was the easiest way to keep herself from it.

But because she hadn't been thinking about it, she hadn't been prepared for him to move so gently into it. Her stomach did cartwheels inside of her, but she'd always had a straight face nobody could beat and her voice stayed steady as she said, "You know me, as long as there's ground beneath me I'm good anywhere. The people matter a lot more than the place, I just need to know where to go to find some really good company." She reached out hesitantly, grazing her fingers over the dirt until she found his hand and could slide her own up over it. His hand was larger than her own, the fingers thick, and she was surprised to find the rough patches of a few small old burn scars when she never would have expected him to lose even the slightest amount of control over his flame. Holding hands wasn't something she'd often do, years of her mother dragging her around by the hand until she _finally_ believed that Toph at least had the layout of their home memorized turning her off it, but she found that she liked the feeling of his beneath her palm. "Oh, but, uh, not the South Pole. Even if I could find rock that wasn't covered in ice to stand on all the time, my feet would freeze off."

"And that would be a terrible waste." He didn't move her hand away, but didn't encourage the touch at all either and after a moment he sighed. "Toph, I understand how, in times of great stress, a person might feel things which--"

"Okay, hold it _right_ there," she cut him off, raising her free hand in a stopping gesture. "Do you really think I wouldn't be able to make my _own_ out if I wanted one? You don't need to try giving me one. And, let's see..." Toph went over other arguments he might try to make in her mind as she went on talking, trying to counter every one of them before he could make them, "No, I wouldn't keep my mouth shut if I changed my mind because I worried about making you feel bad. Yes, I know how much older you are than me. I've also heard enough of Zuko's 'my uncle can be _so embarrassing_ ' stories to know you're usually not bothered when a woman's a lot younger than you, so don't start getting prudish about it just because you _know_ me. Yes, I know that means that unless something really bad happens I'll be outliving you by a long time, but in case you haven't noticed I'm an earthbender. Outliving people by a long time is kind of what we do; even if you magically woke up my age tomorrow I might still outlast you by the better part of century, it sucks but that's how it goes. I know things'll get awkward with Zuko, but, man, that's going to be so funny it doesn't even count as a downside. And don't even get started on the reactions of anybody who isn't already a friend, because I really don't care. Does that about cover it?"

There was laughter in his voice again when he said, "Perhaps you have given this more thought than I'd believed."

"Well... it's not like I _never_ thought about it before my mom brought it up." Toph scuffed her feet back and forth on the ground, the feel of dirt shifting beneath her toes a calming influence. "Like, back when Mai and Zuko got married a lot of the girls were talking about how they wanted their weddings to go and I started thinking over all the guys I know and, well, you were _way_ up the list. The top, pretty much. If I hadn't thought you'd just think I was being a silly girl with a crush we'd have been having this talk _ages_ ago, so I guess I'll have to thank my parents for getting it out there." She turned to face him directly, trying her absolute best to judge how to position her head so his eyes would meet hers. Blind as they were it wouldn't make any difference to her, but she knew that people who saw the regular way were supposed to be able to read things in each other's eyes and if there was any chance that her's might show him how sincere she was being she'd try it. There was a faint tremor in her voice when she talked again, but she didn't let herself feel embarrassed about it. Let him hear it; she'd just gotten them out of the most horrible couple of weeks of her life, she was allowed to be a little emotional. "You're my favorite person, Iroh. I'd have stopped traveling ages ago if you'd ever asked me to stick around when I visited."

Finally he turned his hand beneath her palm so he could close it around hers, and a moment later she felt warm fingers touch her cheek. "I will not marry you," he told her, but just as her stomach was starting to sink he finished with, "yet. However, if you would like to claim one of my rooms as your own, I would be glad to learn what time might lead us to."

She found herself smiling at him so widely that her cheeks ached, and nodded quickly before he had any chance to change his mind. "I can do that. I'd be happy doing that! _But_ , before I do the right thing and take things slow, I've gotta do this at least once."

Her free hand darted out first, landing on his cheek then dragging down into the course hairs of his beard and over to his lips so when she moved her head in she was sure that her aim was just right. The distance between them was far enough that she almost fell into his lap when she leaned over to close it. She saved herself from that by planting her hand on his thigh so she could prop herself up, and found herself smiling against his mouth as she imagined how he'd react if she "accidentally" slipped anyway, sending her hand sliding further up.

But, no, she was good. In honor of his decision she kept her mouth light against his, not trying to deepen the kiss. It wasn't her first kiss, or her most passionate, but just the feel of his hand settling lightly against the small of her back instead of pushing her away was enough to make it outrank every one of the few experimental makeout sessions she'd had with guys she'd gotten to know of the road.

She didn't pull away right away even after she broke the kiss, instead pressing her cheek against his even though his whiskers prickled her skin. "Just something to keep in mind, in case it'll hurry you up to get to next time."


End file.
